After 18 months and about $1 billion in international aid investments, the Kutupalong camp was deemed relatively stable, according to [the UN]. Food security indicators have improved and immunization coverage has grown to over 90 percent. Some 97 percent of Rohingya refugees said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the help they are receiving from non-governmental organizations in the camps, according to a survey of about 1,300 refugees conducted in early 2019 by Xchange, an NGO that documents human migration.

“We now have a totally different response,” Kajdomcaj says.1 2

Today, there is a semblance of order inside the camps. Along its main roads, retail districts have emerged, where Rohingya shopkeepers sell hot meals, snacks, toiletries, betel nuts, and other items traded from Cox’s Bazar. In single-room workshops, men toil to fashion wooden furniture and machetes for chopping firewood.

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• 1. In November 2018, UNHCR began the large-scale distribution of liquefied petroleum gas to refugees and the host community to use as a cleaner, safer source of energy for cooking and heating. New tube wells and public toilets have significantly improved the city’s hygiene and sanitation situation, with 93 percent of refugees surveyed by Xchange saying earlier this year that the camps were satisfactorily clean. In February 2019, Oxfam opened the largest sewage plant that has ever been built in a refugee camp, which is capable of processing the waste of 150,000 people.
• 2. Designers in the U.S. are helping to facilitate these dreams for more stable refugee camps. Nadyeli Quiroz and John David Wagner at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design are embarking on a year-long collaboration with OBAT Helpers, an Indianapolis-based community nonprofit, to explore how to create varied functional spaces within the camps, such as outdoor courtyards or provisional pop-up designs.