Since August 2017, an estimated 745,000 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, increasing the total number of Rohingya refugees to more than 860,000. The presence of the refugee communities has raised concerns over local environmental degradation, falling wages and rising prices, exerting additional pressures on localities where public services and infrastructure were already lagging behind the national average. As the crisis moved beyond the initial emergency phase, comprehensive information on the needs and vulnerabilities of affected host communities is needed in order to inform the design and implementation of effective inter-sectoral programming.
Against this background, a Joint Multi-Sector Needs Assessment (J-MSNA) was conducted across Rohingya refugee communities to support detailed humanitarian planning and enhance the ability of operational partners to meet the strategic aims of donors and coordinating bodies. To date, a number of MSNAs have been implemented to support the response. The 2020 J-MSNA aims to provide an accurate snapshot of the situation with the specific objectives of (1) providing a comprehensive evidence base of household-level multi sectoral needs to inform the 2021 Joint Response Plan (JRP); (2) providing an analysis of how needs have changed in 2020 with an emphasis on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on multisectoral needs; and (3) providing the basis for a joint multi stakeholder analysis process.