The displaced communities we work with in Kachin State Myanmar have displayed incredible resilience over the years. Despite living in harsh high altitude conditions in the camps, with no access to services, they have been gathering together to ensure safe spaces for their children to learn, play and recover from what they’ve been through.
 
Currently, the feel in the camps is one of despondence. It has been a year since the last round of peace-talks and there are none planned for the near future. The conflict in the area runs hot and cold, making it impossible for people here to ever settle or feel safe. The last military attack was just a month ago.
 
There are 100,000 displaced Kachin people on the borders, and after nearly seven years, they are still completely trapped. Their route home is littered with landmines, and even if they could survive the journey back, their land has now been sublet by the government to Chinese companies to use for banana plantations, or occupied by drug cartels.
 
Our Asia Regional Manager, John Littleton returned from visiting the camps here last month. He says “It’s the displaced civilians that pay the price for this conflict. They are caught in a political gridlock, and the pride and momentum that carried them through the first season of living in these challenging conditions is beginning to fade”.
 
Aid agencies are still not granted access to many conflict areas, leaving displaced communities cut off from adequate assistance. Children on the Edge remain the only international organisation providing early years support in the most remote camps along the border.
 
As the world’s attention remains elsewhere, this embattled civilian population are not only being forgotten, but beginning to resign themselves to their fate. It is vital that we maintain our support to the communities we are working with at this time.
 
Back the call for peace and accountability by taking action via Burma Campaign UK, and consider becoming one of our regular donors to provide stable support for work like this. For further information about the situation in Kachin, visit our project page.

Since a brutal campaign of violence from the Myanmar military forced over 650,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, Children on the Edge have been responding to the crisis. Already working in the Kutupalong camp for seven years, we were uniquely placed to offer humanitarian support.

Thanks to the generous support of many donors, we have:

Together these will provide education for 8,400 children a year through 168 classrooms. This work will draw on our experience, providing colourful and innovative schools which stand out for their excellence. If you would like to find out more about education in the camps this year, don't hesitate to get in touch, or lend your support by clicking the buttons below. 

​Children on the Edge have been selected by The Times as one three charities they are raising money for this Christmas. Over the next month, the paper will focus on their work providing humanitarian assistance to thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

More than 700,000 Rohingya have crossed the border from Myanmar to Bangladesh since the 25th August, fleeing a brutal military crackdown from the Myanmar army. Despite decades of attacks and persecution, this is largest wave of violence against them to date, and has been described by the UN as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’.
 
Children on the Edge Asia Regional Manager, John Littleton said “On a human-rights level, this situation is the most appalling we have ever encountered. 2,000-3,000 people have been arriving each day with stories too horrific to print”. 
 
Esther Smitheram, Communications & Advocacy Manager at Children on the Edge said: “We are delighted to have been chosen by The Times to feature in their 2017 Christmas Appeal. This is a huge opportunity for a small, local charity like us to showcase our globally recognised approach. We hope that The Times Christmas Appeal will help to raise funds to ensure we can continue to respond the current humanitarian crisis and support this new wave of refugees in the longer term".
 
Refugees have fled to camps along the border of Myanmar, most of which were already at capacity. Around 60% of those refugees arriving in Bangladesh are women and children, subject to appalling conditions and at risk of hunger, trafficking and disease.
 
One recent arrival is Mohammed, who was shot in the leg as he fled the military, carrying his two children. He told the charity “It is taking people 12-18 days of travel to reach the border, through thick jungle, as all other routes are being watched by the military. When we arrived, there were around 2,400 of us kept in a holding area, we received a small amount of water and a packet of biscuits to last us two days”.
 
Children on the Edge have been providing education to some of the most forgotten Rohingya refugee children in the unregistered Kutupalong camp for the last seven years. This makes them well positioned to provide humanitarian support, through local partners, to those whose needs are the greatest.
 
Ben Wilkes, Executive Director at Children on the Edge has returned this week from visiting the camps in Bangladesh. He says: “The largest challenge facing the camp is the sheer scale of them. Kutupalong camp now claims the sad title of the world’s largest refugee camp. With many agencies rushing to provide aid, much work has been poorly implemented and is now causing further problems. We will be avoiding these pitfalls by ensuring we do thorough research and work with quality providers. We are currently working with local partners to provide thousands of families with clean water and sanitation, food parcels and solar lighting.”.
 
In addition to the provision of aid, Children on the Edge are utilising their 45 refugee schools to create safe spaces for newly arrived refugee children. They plan to provide consistent support, long after the current flurry of attention subsides, by establishing another 100 semi-permanent schools in the camp over the next year.

This work will be featured in the Times throughout December and into the start of the New Year, donations from readers will be split between Children on the Edge, Alzheimer’s Society and the Ellen Macarthur Cancer Trust. 

You can donate online at thetimes.co.uk/timesappeal or call 0151 284 2336

Displaced families in Kachin State, Myanmar spent last Christmas Day in an emergency shelter, and New Years Day in a hastily constructed bunker as mortar shells blasted around them.

This situation has become commonplace for hundreds of Kachin children, who have fled conflict and are surviving with their families in Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps on the border of Myanmar and China. The hardest to reach of these camps are situated high in the mountains, with freezing conditions and very little access to aid. Families have fled to these remote areas in the hope of finding safety, and yet are subject to regular military occupation and attack.

Spending Christmas Day in a shelter is not the worst these children have endured. 3,000 civillians from Zai Awng camp have endured regular shelling and military occupation, forcing them to the Chinese border a number of times, only to be beaten and turned away. A new settlement called Sha It Yang was eventually created, but it lacks clean water and with one road in and out, is cut off from basic supplies.

Children have witnessed terrifying attacks, been forced to hide in the jungle overnight, lost many of their friends and family on the journey, only to end up in a camp with appalling conditions. Our teacher here said “We are doing the best we can, but naturally the children are quieter, less active and less able to be engaged and creative”.

Thanks to the response of Children on the Edge supporters, we’ve been able to ensure that the two new Centres built in the new camp are warm and safe places, where children can begin to recover from what they’ve been through. Last New Year’s fireworks across the border were terrifying for them, we are hoping this year they feel safe enough to enjoy them.

​Children on the Edge remain the only organisation providing ongoing support to young children in these remote camps. Going into 2018 we will be actively seeking support for this crisis that the world has overlooked. One teacher said “The wider community is so tired of the fighting, they just want to go home, and they don’t understand why the world isn’t paying attention”.

​Find out more about our work in Kachin State.

In the last month, a catastrophic rise of violence and ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State, Myanmar has forced over 480,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh, into makeshift refugee camps and local communities. These already impoverished communities, who are still taking stock of recent flood damage, are ill-equipped to host scores of traumatised new arrivals.

Returning today from a trip to Cox’s Bazar and the Kutapalong area where we work, it is clear that the situation is in flux and evolving every day. At present we have observed the following regarding the location, conditions and provision of aid for refugees:

• Makeshift Camps - The majority of new refugee arrivals are currently residing in appalling conditions within Kutupalong camp, which currently has an estimated population of over 300,000 people. This is made up of this month’s arrivals, and those who fled the surge of violence last October.  According to our partners, 57% of these refugees are children. We have been working in the makeshift Kutupalong camp, providing education in a safe space for Rohingya refugee children for six years.
  
  
• Local Communities - Over the last few weeks, in the slum communities of Cox’s Bazar and further enclave areas, there have been over 50,000 Rohingya arrivals. ​These areas are outside the scope of the UN and larger agencies, consequently it is here that Children on the Edge have been concentrating its efforts. ​​We have been working here for many years supporting Community schools for working children and education for Rohingya enclave communities.

​

• Pushback - There are many reports of Bangladeshi authorities pushing thousands of new arrivals back to the camps. It has been unclear how many have returned, or how long they will stay, but even before this recent influx, these communities were already 30 - 40% Rohingya. Due to fear of being discovered by the Bangladeshi authorities, Rohingya arrivals do not identify themselves.
  ​
• Current provision - Media coverage has resulted in a dramatic change in the landscape of Cox’s Bazar, with many new organisations arriving in town. After needs assessments, some of the newer organisations will start work, but our local partners estimate that these will be short-lived aid responses, of around 3 months.
  
  ​Our concern is that there will be an exodus of these organisations after this 3-month emergency stage. By the end of 2017, there is significant potential that thousands of refugees will be left without ongoing support. All larger aid agencies are limited to the official camps, so any refugee population returning to the slum communities will also be without help.

• A more recent situation report (November 2017) can be found here

Our work providing low profile education to Rohingya refugee children has been chosen as one of 20 projects selected as examples of best practice in refugee education.

Over half of the world's refugees are children, the majority of which experience the double jeopardy of losing both their homes and their education.

Promising Practices in Refugee Education (PPIRE) is a joint initiative of Save the Children, UNHCR, and Pearson. Launched in March 2017, the initiative set out to identify, document and promote innovative ways to effectively reach refugee children and young people with quality educational opportunities.

Methods from each chosen organisation were documented in the form of 5,000 word case studies, each recommending lessons for the sector going forward. You can read our case study on low profile education for Rohingya refugee children here. It highlights the need to find alternative solutions to improve the situations of the most vulnerable, and encourages practitioners to work closely with the local refugee communities, with an agile and creative approach.

On the 22nd of September, during the UN General Assembly, the Promising Practices initiative launched a report that synthesises the key findings and lessons learned from across these projects. Both the projects and the experience of implementing partners have been used to identify ten recommendations aimed at improving refugee education policy and practice.

Our Communications and Advocacy Manager, Esther Smitheram went to the event in New York to present on our work with an unregistered Rohingya refugee community.

​She said “We were pleased to contribute to an initiative that is genuinely crowdsourcing information from a wide spectrum of areas and organisations, finding the best education methods for displaced children. Children on the Edge exists to help those children who are out of the spotlight and unreached by the larger agencies, so we welcomed the opportunity to highlight the plight of the Rohingya, especially at this time”.

Children on the Edge are currently seeking financial support to provide immediate humanitarian support for Rohingya refugee families in Bangladesh.
 
A catastrophic rise of violence and ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State, Myanmar has forced over 400,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh into makeshift refugee camps and local communities.
 
These already impoverished communities, who are still taking stock of recent flood damage, are ill-equipped to host scores of traumatised new arrivals. The BBC report that despite larger aid agencies arriving with humanitarian aid, the government has forbidden distribution outside of the official camps.
 
These camps can support only 70,000 of the estimated 400,000 refugees, leaving hundreds of thousands to fend for themselves with no support at all. 60 percent of these arrivals are children, and many Rohingya refugees say they have had no contact with any international aid agency at all.
 
Children on the Edge are uniquely placed to respond to the current crisis and meet the needs of these most vulnerable refugees. We have seven years of experience working within the Rohingya community in an unregistered camp on the Bangladesh border. This work has been highlighted as a ‘Promising Practice’ in a recent report to the UN General Assembly, recommending best practice in refugee education for the sector.
 
We have built up strong local partnerships over this time, and these partners are best situated to provide support to unreached refugees through their skills, experience and networks.
 
Due to the limited help available in the official camps, many new arrivals go on to seek refuge further inland, in urban slums or enclave communities which are already comprised almost entirely of other Rohingya migrants. These areas are outside of the scope of the UN and larger agencies, and it is here that Children on the Edge is currently concentrating its efforts. Over the past few weeks alone, 50,000 Rohingya have sought shelter in the slum areas of Cox’s Bazar.
 
In these communities, we are responding to both the immediate relief needs of the new arrivals as well as preparing to provide services once the crisis passes and world's attention turns elsewhere. Given that there are already 200,000 newly-displaced, vulnerable children along the border, it is difficult to overstate the scale of the need. 
 
In response, we will provide essentials such as rice, clean water, latrines and tarpaulin along with cash transfers to new arrivals in slum and enclave communities. By safeguarding the refugee’s water supply, protecting their health from unsanitary waste, providing basic shelter, and ensuring they have enough to eat, this programme will protect the lives of thousands of the most vulnerable Rohingya in this crisis.
 
In addition, we aim to build 20 safe spaces within these communities. These safe spaces will be child-friendly environments, where 1,200 severely traumatised children can go to re-establish a sense of normalcy, through a daily routine with trained and trusted adults. Here they can play, learn, receive a nutritious snack each day and begin to process what they have been through.
 
Our safe spaces will also give parents and carers a few hours each day, in the knowledge that their children are safe, to start finding solutions to their problems. They can use this time to search for work and food, find lost family members and begin to process what the future might hold.