Photo Essay: Biharis in Geneva Camp, Dhaka

Photograph Inge Colijn

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by Inge Colijn

Geneva Camp in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is an old urban refugee camp. With the 1947 partition of India many Urdu speaking Biharis moved to then East-Pakistan. Those who supported the West Pakistan army during the 1971 Liberation War remained stranded here as stateless communities when East-Pakistan became Bangladesh. Between 1974 and 1992 some 175,000 Biharis were relocated to Pakistan, but many could not or did not want to move to Pakistan. Geneva camp in Dhaka has been one of the bigger Bihari settlements in the country ever since.

The name was created by the people themselves, as initially the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with its headquarters in Geneva, provided them protection and assistance and attempted to obtain citizenship for them. In 2008 Bangladeshi citizenship was granted to those who were either minors during the Liberation War or born afterwards, which was about 50 percent of the population at that time and the rest remained stateless.

Over the years the camp has grown into a very crowded place, with some 40,000 people cramped in an area of just over one acre. The small living areas families have are used for living and working at the same time. Due to lack of space and money doors and windows are lacking, the living areas just have one bed and some shelves on the wall. In fact the area is not different from other crowded areas in Dhaka city, but as Urdu speakers they continue to remain a separate community.

This series of photographs gives a glimpse of the daily life of those who don’t leave the camp in daytime, i.e. women, children and elderly people. They stay around and there is a feel of resignation in the air, so many promises for better living conditions have been made in the past, but they never materialised.

Inge Colijn

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Inge Colijn took up photography as a teenager. Later, as a student of Cultural Anthropology she took a course in Ethnographic Photography. While working for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Inge always carried a camera with her in the field, but photography was more of an afterthought to her main job. After retiring from UNHCR Inge enrolled in photography workshops and got excited about street photography. She is part of a group of street photographers who regularly travel together.

Photos by Inge were shown at Women Street Photographers exhibitions in Brussels and Kuala Lumpur. Inge was a finalist in the 2021 Life Framer competition Street-Life, curated by Bruce Gilden. Two of her photos were included in the book Tales of the Unwritten, published in connection with the Exhibit Around exhibition at the 2021 Trieste Photo Days.