Of the 1,200,000+ Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, 78% are women & children. Since 2018, the Humanity Rises Medical Clinic has delivered 400,000+ PATIENT TREATMENTS and today each one costs just ABOUT $5.00+/- per patient. The Humanity Rises Rehma Child Life Center is the ONLY PROGRAM in the world's largest refugee camp solving for both the PEDIATRIC MENTAL HEALTH & EDUCATION needs of the Rohingya children, for less than $1.40 A DAY.
The Rohingya Genocide Crisis
On August 25, 2017, the Myanmar (Burma) military launched a targeted and systematic genocide campaign against the Rohingya in Rakhine State. Soldiers murdered, tortured and raped Rohingya men, women and children, and burned hundreds of Rohingya villages to the ground, going house to house. In 2017, the United Nations called the resulting exodus "the world's fastest-growing refugee crisis" and "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing." In 2022, the United States formally determined that the Myanmar military's violence against the Rohingya constituted genocide.
More than 750,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in the months after August 2017, joining hundreds of thousands who had escaped earlier waves of persecution. Renewed conflict in Rakhine State has driven a new wave of arrivals since 2024, and more than 152,000 newly arrived Rohingya have been identified and issued family cards since that process launched in 2025. Today, nearly 1.2 million Rohingya refugees live in Bangladesh, most of them in the camps of Cox's Bazar, the world's largest refugee settlement. About 78% are women and children.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMAD FORHAD RAZZAQUE.
“Humanity Rises is the result of Kel’s fierce passion for equity & social justice, education and opportunity. Kel’s commitment to serving the most vulnerable is sacred & profound. The clinic she created in Bangladesh is the result of her strong desire to alleviate suffering by treating each patient with dignity & with the best medical care possible. Kel is a bright & shining light in this turbulent world of ours & one who has never forgotten that we truly do belong to each other.”
Barrie Landry, Philanthropist, former member, UNICEF USA Board of Directors,
Humanity Rises Director Emeritus
The Humanity Rises Medical Clinic
Located in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, home to the world's largest refugee camp and nearly 1.2 million Rohingya refugees, the Humanity Rises Medical Clinic (HRMC) has provided free critical healthcare, testing and medication to hundreds of thousands of patients since opening in 2018. Half of them have been children. In 2026, the clinic is on track to treat approximately 40,000 patients at an average cost of less than $5.20 per patient.
In its early days, the clinic treated the devastating injuries of Myanmar's genocidal campaign against the Rohingya, which began in August 2017, including third-degree burns, gunshot wounds and pregnancies resulting from rape. Today, it treats a wide range of illnesses and conditions, including contusions, COVID-19, diphtheria, cholera, severe dehydration, hepatitis C, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, COPD, bronchial asthma, sexually transmitted infections, and chest and eye infections.
HRMC goes well beyond what most clinics of its size in the camp provides. While similar community clinics are typically open five days a week, HRMC is open six. It also offers onsite services they typically don't, including complete blood count (CBC) testing, ECGs and ultrasounds, which allow our doctors to diagnose illnesses more quickly and accurately and begin treatment sooner. An onsite pharmacy dispenses prescribed medication free of charge, so patients leave with the treatment they need.
Because of the clinic's strong reputation, the World Health Organization (WHO) has selected HRMC to administer hepatitis B, rabies and tetanus vaccines. HRMC is also authorized to provide anti-D injections, a preventive treatment given to Rh-negative mothers to protect their future babies from a serious and potentially fatal blood condition. Most Health Posts, and even many Primary Health Centers, are not authorized to provide these services.
Beyond medical care, the clinic provides nutritional supplements to babies, young children, and pregnant and postpartum women to prevent and treat malnutrition. It also offers sexual and reproductive health counseling, along with guidance on hygiene and general nutrition.
The Humanity Rises
Rehma Child Life Center
The Rohingya children have endured unimaginable horror as targets of the Myanmar military's genocidal campaign, and it has left each of them with deep trauma. Many children were raped themselves. Others witnessed their mothers being raped, siblings thrown alive into fires, babies shot and toddlers killed with machetes, among other incomprehensible acts of violence.
Named in honor of Rehma Sabir, the Humanity Rises Rehma Child Life Center (HRRCLC) provides education-based pediatric mental health services to Rohingya children. It is the only learning center in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar that addresses both pediatric mental health and formal education in a single program, with full-time psychologists working side by side with teachers in the classroom.
The center's facilities include two classrooms, a soccer field, an outdoor play area, three bathrooms and wash stations. In 2026, the HRRCLC is projected to serve more than 62,000 nutritionally balanced meals to the children in its care. At the HRRCLC, about $500 a year, less than $1.40 a day, provides a child with education, mental health care and a daily meal. In doing so, we nourish their minds, bodies and souls.
About Humanity Rises
Humanity Rises is a registered 501(c)(3) humanitarian aid organization serving refugees, currently focused on the Rohingya genocide crisis in Bangladesh. We believe that in the world's darkest moments, light shines through when humanity rises to help those affected by tragedy, and that in lifting others, we lift ourselves.
When Humanity Rises launched in 2017, our work focused on restoring dignity and hope to refugees in camps in Greece. We installed outdoor gym parks inside the camps, which lifted the spirits of entire communities. We believe physical exercise restores dignity and helps rebuild the emotional strength refugees need to hold on to hope.
By the end of 2017, more than 750,000 Rohingya had fled Myanmar's Rakhine State to escape the military's targeted and systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing. We knew we had to help the innocent people at the center of this genocide. After extensive due diligence, we chose to focus on alleviating suffering, and in June 2018 we opened the Humanity Rises Medical Clinic (HRMC) in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, home to the world's largest refugee camp and nearly 1.2 million Rohingya refugees. Since then, the clinic has provided free critical healthcare, testing and medication to hundreds of thousands of patients, half of them children. In 2026, it is on track to treat approximately 40,000 patients at an average cost of less than $5.20 per patient.
In February 2019, we opened the Humanity Rises Rehma Child Life Center (HRRCLC), which provides education-based pediatric mental health services to Rohingya children living with deep trauma from the horrors they witnessed. It is the only learning center in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar that addresses both pediatric mental health and formal education in a single program, with full-time psychologists working side by side with teachers in the classroom. In 2026, the center is projected to serve more than 62,000 nutritionally balanced meals to the children in its care, nourishing their minds, bodies and souls.
No one should have to endure even a moment of the physical and emotional pain the Rohingya live with every day. Through healthcare, education and mental health support, we work to ease that suffering and remind them they are not forgotten.
Our Previous Work
Help us alleviate genocide-driven suffering in the lives of the innocent Rohingya souls at the center of the fastest growing humanitarian crisis of our lives.
