Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh face some of the highest exposure in the world to extreme weather events, such as cyclones and flooding. Human trafficking networks are exploiting this ongoing state of crisis to recruit and exploit refugees suffering from post-traumatic stress.

This project seeks to generate the first causal evidence on the effects of extreme weather exposure on household trafficking risk through a prospective cohort study conducted across the refugee camps.

This study seeks to illuminate an urgently intensifying climate impact pathway facing populations in protracted involuntary displacement, laying the foundation for community-grounded intervention development.

This project was co-designed and will be implemented in full partnership with Rohingya refugee collaborators residing in the camps, demonstrating that integrating members of target populations as true research partners is not only feasible but essential to research progress.

“Together with our regional partners and refugee collaborators, we will investigate and document these unrecognized climate-trafficking linkages in a setting facing among the most severe, intensifying disasters in the world,” said PhD Student Liza Goldberg, a team member on the project. She added, “This research also seeks to lift the voices of trafficking survivors who are often chronically marginalized in refugee camp settings, centralizing their insights as core pieces of the climate-trafficking puzzle.”

Principal Investigators:

Beatriz Magaloni, PhD

Farjana Jahan, MD

Stephen Luby, PhD

Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, PhD

Funders:

Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health

Stanford Center for Human & Planetary Health

Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment