Bangladesh now hosts more than a million refugees

In August 2017, violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya across the border into Cox’s Bazar. UNHCR’s count of refugees in Bangladesh more than tripled in a single year, from 276,000 at the end of 2016 to 932,000 at the end of 2017.

1.18 million

Refugees under UNHCR’s mandate in Bangladesh, 2025.

The number has kept rising, to over 1.1 million, as new arrivals continue and children are born in the camps. Most live in the world’s largest refugee settlement, dependent on shrinking international aid, with little access to formal education or work and no safe route home.

Source: UNHCR, via World Bank WDI.