Energy Poverty as a Human Rights Crisis

The Rohingya displacement crisis, now in its eighth year, stands as one of contemporary history's most prolonged refugee emergencies. Beyond the widely reported issues of food scarcity and violence lies a critically overlooked dimension: energy deprivation.

The persistent denial of sufficient energy access within the Cox's Bazar refugee settlements represents a multifaceted human rights violation—impacting security, public health, gender parity, and ecological sustainability. Employing the energy justice analytical framework, this analysis demonstrates how distributional, recognition-based, and procedural inequities exacerbate the vulnerabilities confronting nearly one million stateless persons.

The Crisis in Context

The Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic community from Myanmar's Rakhine State, have endured systematic persecution over decades. The 1982 Citizenship Act effectively rendered them stateless. In August 2017, military operations—characterised by United Nations investigators as exhibiting genocidal characteristics—forced over 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh within weeks.

Today, Cox's Bazar hosts approximately 989,585 refugees across 33 camp facilities, making it the world's largest and most densely populated refugee settlement. These camps occupy merely 24 square kilometres—comparable to a modest town—while sheltering a population approaching one million. Bangladesh has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, meaning the Rohingya technically possess no formal refugee designation under domestic legislation.

An Energy Justice Analysis

Contemporary scholarship has developed the notion of "energy justice" to examine how the advantages and disadvantages of energy systems are distributed across populations. Applied to the Rohingya situation, this lens exposes three interconnected manifestations of injustice.

Distributional Injustice

Before major intervention programs commenced, roughly 80% of refugee households depended upon firewood for cooking, translating into an astonishing daily consumption of 700 metric tons of wood. Women and children, shouldering primary responsibility for gathering fuel, devoted hours daily to traversing surrounding forests, subjecting themselves to harassment, physical assault, and landslide hazards.

Energy Poverty in Rohingya Camps

Indoor air pollution from biomass combustion has been recognised as the principal cause of respiratory ailments in the camps. According to World Health Organisation data, household atmospheric pollution from solid-fuel combustion accounts for 2.9 million deaths worldwide annually. An estimated 60% of camp women and children face heightened susceptibility to respiratory conditions.

Insufficient lighting further intensifies vulnerabilities. Médecins Sans Frontières has documented that "numerous camp zones remain hazardous and poorly illuminated," fostering conditions conducive to gender-based violence after nightfall. The International Rescue Committee indicates that 81% of gender-based violence incidents within the camps involve intimate partners, though inadequate illumination enables additional assault forms including abduction and trafficking.

Recognition Injustice

For an extended period, humanitarian responses emphasised food, water, and shelter while regarding energy as secondary. This reflects a broader tendency in which cooking fuel is rarely included in standard relief provisions, despite its fundamental importance to survival.

This lack of acknowledgement produces concrete consequences. Camp-related deforestation—over 4,937 hectares of protected woodland cleared for settlement construction, plus an additional 1,200–1,600 hectares stripped for firewood—has generated environmental damages valued at approximately USD 1.09 billion.

Procedural Injustice

The Rohingya have exercised minimal influence over the conceptualization and execution of energy initiatives within their own settlements. Top-down solutions frequently neglect cultural customs, household structures, and the particular limitations of camp existence. When refugees are approached as passive beneficiaries rather than active contributors, programs falter and human dignity diminishes.

Population Density Comparison

The Legal Framework

While no international agreement explicitly establishes a "right to energy," the deprivations outlined above intersect with multiple acknowledged human rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets forth foundational tenets: Article 3 guarantees the rights to life, liberty, and personal security - rights that cannot be meaningfully exercised when nighttime conditions render public areas hazardous. Article 25 recognises the right to an adequate standard of living, including food, housing, and medical care.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights expands upon these principles. Article 11 obligates states to recognise the right to an adequate standard of living. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has construed these provisions to encompass access to foundational determinants of health—including, by reasonable inference, clean cooking energy.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women holds particular relevance given that women and girls comprise over 52% of the refugee population. The Convention on the Rights of the Child likewise pertains—children in camps disproportionately suffer from indoor atmospheric pollution, their developing respiratory systems exhibiting particular sensitivity to particulate matter.

Sustainable Development Goal 7 commits the global community to guaranteeing "access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all" by 2030. The Rohingya constitute a critical test of whether this pledge carries genuine meaning.

Health and Safety Impact of Energy Security

Progress and Precarity

Considerable advancement has occurred. Since 2018, UNHCR and collaborating organizations have provided liquefied petroleum gas cooking equipment to all refugee households, diminishing firewood requirements by 80% and facilitating the revegetation of more than 600 hectares—a territory twice the expanse of New York's Central Park.

Nevertheless, these achievements remain precarious. Financial shortfalls in 2025 have jeopardized LPG provision, risking reversal of hard-earned environmental and health gains.

Recommendations for Policymakers

Sustained multi-year funding: Donor nations must pledge sustained, multi-year financial support for energy programming. Single disbursements prove inadequate for extended crises.

Solar lighting expansion: Investments in solar illumination for communal spaces—pathways, sanitation facilities, healthcare centers—require expansion to address nighttime security concerns.

Clean cooking technology pilots: Demonstration projects for solar microgrids and electric cooking technologies warrant scaling; they offer pathways to self-sufficiency while reducing long-term fuel expenditures.

Environment Impact of Energy Injustice causes a vicious, self-destructive loop

Host community integration: Benefits to host communities should be explicitly integrated into all energy interventions, acknowledging that Bangladeshi residents in Cox's Bazar themselves rank among the nation's poorest.

Participatory governance: Refugees must participate substantively in the design and administration of energy programs. Procedural inequities cannot be rectified without mechanisms treating the Rohingya as autonomous agents rather than passive subjects of humanitarian attention.

So, now what ...

Energy deprivation in the Rohingya settlements constitutes far more than a marginal concern. It represents an intersecting human rights emergency that amplifies every other vulnerability confronting these stateless persons. The failure to address this situation reflects a deficiency of vision as much as resources - a failure to acknowledge that the rights to health, security, and adequate living standards cannot materialise absent clean cooking fuel and sufficient illumination.

The international community has made pledges - to exclude no one, to realise universal energy access, to uphold the inherent dignity of every human being. The Rohingya of Cox's Bazar await evidence of whether those commitments possess genuine substance.

This analysis draws on research from the Energy Research & Social Science journal, UNHCR operational data, WHO health statistics, and field reporting from Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Rescue Committee.