Sittwe Camp Profiling Report

Rakhine State, located in western Myanmar, is home to roughly 3.2 million people. Compared to the rest of the country, Rakhine State is relatively underdeveloped. The majority of the population are Buddhists from the Rakhine ethnic group; in addition, nearly three in ten people are Muslim.

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In 2012, two waves of inter-communal violence between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslims in Rakhine State left dozens dead and tens of thousands of people displaced. As of the beginning of 2017, about 121,000 people remain displaced, most of whom live in Sittwe Township.

To reduce the chances of further violence, the Government segregated the two communities in Sittwe Township in 2012, and cordoned off a rural area on the outskirts of Sittwe for Muslims who were displaced. Movement restrictions for these internally displaced people remain in place as of June 2017. Meanwhile, many Rakhine who were displaced were settled in four camps in Sittwe Town. In 2015, these sites were either relocated, or their residents were locally integrated and provided with housing.

In order to obtain more detailed information on this displacement situation, the Camp Coordination and Camp Management Cluster (CCCM), the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) conducted a profiling exercise on internally displaced persons in Sittwe, with the support of the Rakhine State Government.

OBJECTIVES

The profiling exercise was conducted to address the need for up-to-date information on the situation faced by people displaced by the 2012 crisis in Sittwe Township. The specific objectives of the exercise were to:

• Update population figures for the Sittwe rural camps, based on anonymous data disaggregated by age, sex, location, place of origin and diversity;

• Analyse the displacement history of the target population;

• Analyse the current situation of target populations, including their socio-economic situation, living conditions, and protection concerns;

• Develop a better understanding of the vulnerability, capacities, coping mechanisms, and future intentions and perceptions of target populations;

• Provide a dataset available to the Government, and humanitarian and development community; and • Develop a methodology and data collection tools that could be replicated in other Rakhine townships with displaced populations.

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Posted on 6 September 2017