In every humanitarian crisis, affected communities need information immediately about how to access vital aid services or reconnect with family members. At the same time, they require established feedback mechanisms so that aid groups can better meet their needs.

Since late August, nearly 650,000 Rohingya have fled to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, from Myanmar, joining more than 200,000 refugees already living in registered and makeshift camps in the area. Here, aid groups are communicating with affected communities any way they can. Sporadic physical communication "hubs" dot the 3,000-acre Kutupalong-Balukhali Expansion Site, where refugees are being settled farther and farther from established services. Posters denoting proper hygiene methods and others declaring where services can be found are heavy on illustrations, accompanied by text in English, Bengali, which is the national language of Bangladesh, and Burmese.

The current suite of ad hoc strategies reflects an aid community unprepared for the rapid growth of a city-sized refugee camp. But communication challenges have also been compounded by the low literacy rate of the refugee population, the complexities of the Rohingya language, and a surge of aid groups unfamiliar with the local context.

Read the full article about communication between aid groups and Rohingya refugees by Kelli Rogers at Devex International Development.