COX'S Bazar District - Teknaf and Ukhia Upazila Para and Ward Locations

This data is made available for orientation and navigation purposes only. It is based entirely on information provided at community level and is in no way endorsed or recognised by ECHO, humanitarian partners or the Government of Bangladesh.

"Paras "are informal units of social and spatial organisation as recognised and referred to by communities in Cox’s Bazar district, translating as “neighbourhood” or “community.” Paras tend to be smaller than census-defined Villages, though in some instances they may overlap. In Cox’s Bazar Union Parishad records, lists of communities below the Union level tend to be organised by para. Since paras are most commonly used local reference points by communities themselves, and are generally documented more systematically at the local level compared to Villages, they have been targeted for mapping by REACH. However, it is important to stress that paras have no formal status as legal or administrative units, or as points of geo-reference.

With generous support from ECHO, REACH collected lists of paras, by ward, from Union Parishad offices. REACH teams then visited each para and asked community members for directions to the central area of each para (e.g. a mosque or market), where GPS points were taken on smartphones. In some cases, paras may be recognised locally but not included on Union Parishad lists. These have not been mapped. Para lists were collected in Bangla and translated into English based on a standardised system of transliteration developed and implemented by Translators Without Borders.

Limitations/caveats for this exercise are as follows: Paras in the urban area of Teknaf Paurashava have not been mapped; In some cases paras included wards of a given Union may fall partially or wholly under the cadastral boundaries of neighbouring Unions; Since paras are not formal administrative, census or cadastral units, there is no formal system for cataloguing them beyond lists held by Union Parishads. While the majority of Union Parishads maintained hard/soft copy lists, some were only able to provide lists verbally to REACH staff. As a consequence, these lists are not guaranteed to be comprehensive, and the data presented here may not fully match ground realities as experienced by local communities, or assessments/mapping conducted by other humanitarian actors; There is no standardised system for transliterating Bangla into English. While Translators Without Borders have worked to implement a consistent transliteration system, spelling of para names in this database may differ from spellings used in other documents/maps/assessments produced by humanitarian partners.