Registered Climate Migrants Approach 116 Million as Corridors Widen

DHAKA — The registered climate-migrant count is approaching 116 million this month, the Passage Trust confirmed, another rise in a tally that has climbed steadily through the hot season. The number is not an abstraction to Rahima Begum, forty-one, who reached a Passage Trust transit shelter here after the third failed monsoon drove her family off land her grandfather farmed. "They gave me a bunk and a number," she said. "I am the number now." Hearth Relief International, which coordinates shelter and water at corridor way-stations, says arrivals have outpaced its Dhaka capacity for six straight weeks. Trust field director Anwar Hossain was careful with the figure. "Sixteen million more than a year ago is not a statistic that ends," he said. "It is people who keep arriving after we have run out of ways to be surprised." The corridors widen; the count rises; the shelters, for now, hold.