In September 2017, as Rohingya refugees arrived in large numbers after fleeing Myanmar, a physical queue formed for cooked meals at Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh. UNHCR’s record directly describes newly arrived refugees lining up at a feeding centre. A joint programme supplied one hot meal a day to about 3,000 vulnerable people, including both new arrivals and longer-term residents.
This was another kind of waiting after the journey to safety. For people who had lost homes and relatives and arrived tired, hungry, or ill, taking a place with a bowl became the clearest route to that day’s meal. Although relief capacity could not match the speed of arrivals, the food queue created an order through which scarce cooked meals could be handed out one person at a time.