I am leaving the border region between Myanmar and Bangladesh with a sober assessment of the situation here. I travelled to the northern parts of Rakhine State, in Myanmar, where people fled violence in huge numbers in August 2017, and to the camps of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where they found refuge.

I met those who stayed and those who left and it is clear that people are suffering on both sides. People lack secure housing, electricity, latrines, medicine and health care. There are few options for people to earn an income to allow them to move beyond aid and emergency conditions.

More than a million people live in misery, held hostage to a profoundly unsettling contradiction. Those sheltering in the camps of Cox’s Bazar live in shocking conditions that violate human dignity. With the monsoons arriving, their lives will only get worse. They cannot stay and they cannot return.

I cannot claim that life for those in Rakhine State is significantly better. In this remote, rarely-visited area, we drove through the areas where villages once stood. Little remains now and the vegetation is rapidly reclaiming the land. In other parts, former schools and health centres stand empty.

In one village I visited, only 2,000 of the original 9,000 villagers remain. I spoke with all communities - Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu. They described how the social fabric and local economy have been destroyed, making people entirely reliant on humanitarian aid.