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More than a million Rohingya have fled Myanmar to live in Bangladesh, mostly in Cox's Bazar district. The government 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 they depend on for their livelihood — land, water, agriculture, and forests — tension and conflict arise. The host community members perceive that the government and aid agencies prioritize the Rohingya over the host communities in allocating resources, exacerbating their resentment. I argue that although both the locals and the Rohingya are poor and marginalized, as citizens, the locals have a stronger claim to environmental citizenship and rights to state resources. Any ecological policies taken towards the safeguarding of resource usage rights of the Rohingyas should also be inclusive and should give equal consideration to the local host community members. [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]