The Trapped Elephant in the Humanitarian’s Room: Ensuring Ecological Justice Amidst a Refugee Crisis

The mass influx of Rohingyas to Cox’s Bazaar refugee camps in 2017 blocked the only migratory corridor used by the critically endangered Asian Elephants to travel between their habitats in Bangladesh and Myanmar. In an unforeseen collision between Rohingya refugees and Asian elephants, humanitarian and conservation actors have found themselves at an impasse—protecting one group threatens the existence of another. Temporary interventions were executed to mitigate the conflict and save human lives, but without extensive, long-term solutions, the elephants risk losing genetic diversity and even extinction. Analyzed with posthumanist ethics, on the ground realities of inadequate conservation measures and a deficient legislative landscape, it becomes apparent that a new stakeholder framework must be proposed, inclusive of all populations that are directly or indirectly impacted, tracing the conflict back to a central actant.