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Today, May 10, is Mothers’ Day.

A few hours after undergoing a caesarean section, a Rohingya woman is carried back to her shelter on a makeshift stretcher, a table lifted by her relatives navigating narrow, uneven paths through the camp. There is no ambulance to take her home. 

A few hours after undergoing a caesarean section, a Rohingya woman is carried back to her shelter on a makeshift stretcher, a table lifted by her relatives navigating narrow, uneven paths through the camp. There is no ambulance to take her home. 

Global frameworks on reproductive rights, maternal health and safe motherhood are built on a set of assumptions: that pregnancy can be supported through access to healthcare, functioning institutions, and a degree of choice and agency.

In the Rohingya camps, these assumptions collapse. Conversations with Rohingya mothers, pregnant women and community based human rights defenders in Cox’s Bazar camps in Bangladesh that this author had reveal a different reality: motherhood here is not anchored in certainty of care, of safety, or of a secure future, but is shaped by constraint, negotiation, and endurance. 

The indignity of basic needs

The overwhelming majority of Rohingya families rely on shared toilets, used by dozens of households. While a recent water, sanitation and hygiene report estimates usage of approximately 18 persons per latrine and 37 per bathing cubicle, women I spoke with reported far higher figures, with 20–40 families often sharing a single toilet. There is no running water; women must carry water from their shelters each time they use these facilities. The toilets are not gender segregated.

For pregnant women, this is not a minor inconvenience. It is a daily ordeal. The facilities are squat-based pit latrines, physically difficult to use in later stages of pregnancy. “At seven months, it is very hard to sit like that,” one woman explained to me. Pregnancy requires more frequent toilet use, which means repeated trips of five to 10 minutes each way and in the mornings, a queue of at least five people waiting.

Toilets at the Rohingya settlement at Cox’s Bazar. Photo: Rimas Khan.

For adolescent girls and younger women, carrying water to the toilet during the day can be a........

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