WHEN the first batch of Rohingya refugees were ferried to Bhasan Char in 2020, the stage was set with lofty promises and confident rhetoric. The island, a patch of land rising out of the Bay of Bengal, was portrayed as a safe haven. Concrete cluster villages, embankments against tidal surges, cyclone shelters doubling as schools and medical centres — everything was showcased as proof of a grand humanitarian vision. It was not just a project, it was a political statement: Bangladesh had ‘solved’ the refugee crisis, at least for a select number of them.
But five years later, the glitter of the promise has eroded. Behind the numbers, the embankments, and the brick houses, Bhasan Char is slowly unmasking itself as what it always was — a deeply flawed experiment built on fragile assumptions, questionable motives, and a cavalier disregard for human dignity. It is not merely a logistical headache; it is a monument to the hubris of a government that confused spectacle for sustainability and concrete walls for compassion.
The truth is now plain: the relocation to Bhasan Char has stopped. The interim government that replaced the Awami League has allowed the project to wither quietly, unwilling to either defend it or dismantle it outright. That hesitation itself tells the story. The grand design that once consumed billions of taka from the public purse has turned into a burden no one wants to own. What was trumpeted as a bold solution is now a stranded island of failure, both literally and metaphorically.
The problems are systemic and predictable. Communication with the mainland remains arduous and unreliable, turning basic medical care into a logistical nightmare. For the critically ill, transport to hospitals in Noakhali is not just inconvenient, it is often a matter of life and death. Fuel shortages cripple daily life; with a shortfall of nearly half the required gas cylinders, even the act of cooking has become uncertain. Service delivery costs 30 per cent more than in Cox’s Bazar camps, an irony given that the government once marketed the project as an efficient alternative. Instead of easing the financial and administrative pressure, Bhasan Char has become a drain.
Isolation compounds everything. Refugees are trapped on the island with no freedom of movement. Once there was a program that allowed limited visits to Cox’s Bazar to see relatives, but that too collapsed for lack of funds. Cut off from families, deprived of education beyond basic grades, and denied access to consistent medical or food supplies, refugees find themselves in a gilded cage without the gilt. For all its embankments and concrete blocks, Bhasan Char feels less like a community and more like a prison colony. Small wonder then that thousands have fled at the first opportunity, risking perilous sea journeys or clandestine escapes to rejoin relatives elsewhere.
This reality was not unforeseeable. From the beginning, critics warned that confining tens of thousands of stateless people to an isolated island vulnerable to natural disasters was less a humanitarian gesture and more an act of displacement theatre. The project was never about giving the Rohingya a better life. It was about optics, contracts, and the desire to manufacture a narrative of control. In the name of compassion, the then government created a stage-managed island that looked good on drone footage but collapsed under the weight of daily life.
The financial dimension alone is damning. More than Tk 2,300 crore was poured into the island — public money that could have strengthened education, healthcare, and infrastructure in the mainland camps where over a million refugees already live. Instead, the funds were sunk into a remote island whose sustainability was always questionable. The result: an expensive vanity project that now stands abandoned, a white elephant gleaming against the backdrop of the Bay of Bengal. The irony is bitter. The Rohingya crisis is the single largest humanitarian challenge Bangladesh has faced in decades, yet instead of directing resources towards durable solutions, a vast chunk was wasted in creating an isolated ‘detention’ zone.
Even for those who remain, life on Bhasan Char is not the sanctuary once promised. Food rations have deteriorated over time, water requires purification tablets, and educational opportunities stall beyond the primary level. Social tensions simmer as refugees clash with local fishermen over access to resources, or attempt to make a living through illegal crab catching. Security forces patrol constantly, but they cannot patrol against despair. The most telling fact is that whenever possible, refugees leave. They do not want to stay, not because they are ungrateful, but because the island was never designed for them to thrive. It was designed to contain them.
Supporters of the project often point to the infrastructure — the embankments, the cyclone shelters, the brick houses. But what they miss is that human dignity cannot be engineered through concrete. A refugee crisis is not solved by building houses; it is managed through inclusive policy, global diplomacy and sustainable service delivery. By isolating the Rohingya on an island far from public scrutiny, the government not only worsened their plight but also cut them off from international oversight. NGOs and UN agencies operate there, but under constraints. Service delivery is costly, access is limited, and the entire effort feels like a parallel operation detached from the broader refugee response.
The failure of Bhasan Char also illustrates a deeper malaise in governance. Projects in Bangladesh too often become showcases for construction, contracts, and ribbon-cutting ceremonies rather than long-term problem solving. The island, with its neat rows of houses and embankments, fit perfectly into this political culture of spectacle. It allowed the government to claim that it had found a ‘solution’ to overcrowding in Cox’s Bazar, while at the same time channelling vast funds into a mega-project. The real beneficiaries were not the refugees but the contractors, consultants, and interest groups who thrived in the fog of a hastily conceived scheme.
Now, with the interim government unwilling to continue relocations, the question arises: what next? More than 37,000 people remain stranded there, caught between a political legacy project and a future no one wants to claim. Bringing them back to Cox’s Bazar is no simple matter; it would require fresh planning, resources, and community integration. But leaving them on the island is equally untenable. The longer they remain isolated, the deeper the scars on their education, livelihoods, and psychological well-being. This is the cruel aftermath of short-sighted policymaking: choices shrink, and the victims are those who had no say in the first place.
What is most tragic is that Bhasan Char has become a symbol of wasted opportunity. Instead of using its diplomatic capital to push harder for repatriation, or to mobilise global funding for more humane management of the camps, Bangladesh chose the path of architectural bravado. An island was raised, but hope was buried. The project has neither improved the Rohingya’s conditions nor eased Bangladesh’s burden. It has only drained the exchequer and left behind an island of broken promises.
In the end, Bhasan Char stands as a cautionary tale. It reminds us that solutions to humanitarian crises cannot be engineered through isolation, spectacle or construction alone. They require foresight, transparency, and above all, a recognition of human dignity. Bangladesh has already paid dearly for ignoring these truths — in wasted money, in lost credibility, and in the silent suffering of tens of thousands stranded on a remote island. The sooner the chapter of Bhasan Char is closed, the better for everyone — not least for the refugees who never asked to be part of this failed experiment in the first place.
HM Nazmul Alam, an academic, journalist and political analyst, teaches at IUBAT.
