A cyclone could wash away some of the world's largest refugee camps, worsening an already dire humanitarian crisis that has displaced 620,000 Rohingya Muslims over the past three months, International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Canadian aid workers are warning.

Ms. Bibeau is in Bangladesh visiting the squalid makeshift refugee camps that have popped up since the end of August, when violence in Myanmar forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. Speaking to The Globe and Mail from Dhaka, the minister said Rohingya fear that the camps – constructed mostly of plastic tarps held up by bamboo poles – would be extremely vulnerable to a cyclone.

They're afraid that the first cyclone and the first big rain will just wash right through part of the camps and it might be another disaster," she [Marie Claude-Bibeau] said.

Bangladesh is in one of its cyclone seasons, which run from September through December and March through July.

Canadian aid workers in Bangladesh said that while the camps are currently very hot and dusty, there is concern about a cyclone ripping through the area.

Read the full article by Michelle Zilio about refugees from The Globe and Mail