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More than 1 million Rohingya have fled Myanmar to live in Bangladesh, mostly in Cox's Bazar district. The government of Bangladesh has been praised worldwide for sheltering them, but this enormous influx has strained its limited resources. As the host communities struggle with the Rohingya for control over, and access to, the scarce natural resources on which they depend for their livelihood – land, water, agriculture and forests – tension and conflict arises. The host community members perceive that the government and aid agencies prioritise the Rohingya over them in allocating resources, exacerbating their resentment. Both the locals and the Rohingya are marginalised, and therefore there is a need to focus on refugee–host community resource-based conflicts and related issues before designing any policy catering to the refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bangladesh hosts over a million Rohingya on humanitarian grounds and offers them food and shelter. The Rohingya compete with the local community for access to economic and environmental resources and public services. I analyse this competition and conflict using conflict theory, which is a sociological perspective on social conflict. I argue that while the Rohingya are unquestionably marginalized, so is the local community, who are citizens and have the right to life and livelihood. I find that the presence of the Rohingya constrains the poor local community's already limited access and that leads to conflicts on various issues such as access to inadequate public services, local and economic activities such as labour markets and environmental resources, and there is an emerging problem of safety and security that they are facing. We can understand this as a type of resource conflict which emerges within the south-south forced migration, statelessness, and refugee-hood context between the citizens and the refugees, as countries in the Global South, such as Bangladesh, generally lack the resources and capacity to govern people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]