Despite the efforts made by the United Nations over the past year to help create safeguards for all communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, it is clear that conditions are still not suitable for the safe, voluntary, and sustainable return of Rohingya refugees to their home, Secretary-General António Guterres on 28 August 2018 said.
UNHCR/Andrew Mconnell | Rohingya refugees wait for a food distribution in Kutupalong camp, Cox’s Bazar Bangladesh.
The UN chief was briefing the Security Council on the situation in Myanmar, where 12 months ago a military operation in northern Rakhine state sparked an exodus of desperate Rohingya refugees that quickly became one of the world’s worst humanitarian and human rights crises.
27 August 2018 — In February 2018 I participated in a Nobel Women’s Initiative delegation to Bangladesh.
The purpose of our delegation was to visit Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong, Bangladesh where over 1 million Rohingya Muslim refugees were living in makeshift camps having fled persecution by Myanmar soldiers.
On the delegation was Nobel Peace laureates Shirin Ebadi, Tawakkol Karmen and myself. We met with over 100 Rohingya women who told us their stories of rape and murder of many of their families by Myanmar soldiers.
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, 24 August 2018 (UNFPA)* – 25 August marks the one-year anniversary of the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world. Over 720,000 Rohingya have fled violence in Myanmar in the past twelve months, joining some 213,000 already in Bangladesh to create the world’s most densely populated refugee settlement.
Harrowing accounts of gender-based violence have been widely reported.
Many of the refugees walk for days before reaching safety. They brave jungles, mountains and rivers to seek shelter in one of the settlements in Cox’s Bazar District. More than half of them are women and girls.
World leaders’ failure to act has allowed the Myanmar security forces’ perpetrators of crimes against humanity to remain at large for a year after their murderous campaign against the Rohingya prompted an exodus of epic proportions, Amnesty International on said.*
More than 700,000 Rohingya women, men, and children fled from northern Rakhine State to neighbouring Bangladesh after 25 August 2017, when the Myanmar security forces launched a widespread as well as systematic assault on hundreds of Rohingya villages.
The refugee crisis in Bangladesh sparked by the mass exodus of people from Myanmar almost a year ago risks creating a “lost generation” of Rohingya children who lack the life skills they will need in future, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned.
UNICEF/Patrick Brown | A boy carries one of the bamboo poles, which were unloaded near the settlement for use in building basic shelters, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on 8 July 2018.
Hundreds of thousands of mainly Muslim Rohingya continue to live in cramped and rudimentary camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, after fleeing a military operation in Myanmar that was subsequently likened to “ethnic cleansing” by the UN’s top human rights official, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein.
22 August 2018 (Norwegian Refugee Council)* – Aid funding for refugee relief is running out while conditions are still not in place for the safe return of over 700,000 people forced to flee Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh after violence broke out one year ago, warns the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Janoara fled from Myanmar in late August 2017 after the military attacked her village, killed her grandfather and torched her house. She only managed to grab her two sons, Saifula (8) and Mohammed Hossein (3) and run for safety. She struggles to get enough food to feed her children. Photo: Ingebjørg Kårstad/NRC
The mass human exodus of refugees from Myanmar to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, which started on 25 August 2017, was one of the fastest growing refugee crises last year.
Cox’s Bazar, 17 August 2018 (IOM)* – A major environmental project to provide around 250,000 families with liquid petroleum gas (LPG) stoves and gas cylinders has been launched by UN agencies and the government in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, to help prevent further deforestation linked to the Rohingya refugee crisis.
UN agencies and Bangladesh government launch alternative fuel project in Cox’s Bazar to help reduce deforestation linked to Rohingya crisis. Photos: Patrick Shepherd FAO/IOM
Cox’s Bazar, 10 August 2018 (IOM)* – UN Migration Agency medical staff in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, have now carried out over half a million consultations since the Rohingya refugee crisis began nearly a year ago, as monsoon conditions sparked the busiest week of the year for doctors and nurses working in the camps.
Families wait for treatment at an IOM medical clinic in the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo: Lydia Moore / IOM 2018
The Head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, on 7 August 2018urged government representatives and business leaders from the Asia-Pacific region to offer more support and protection for over 700,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled violence and discrimination in Myanmar’s Rakhine State over the past year.
UNICEF/Brian Sokol | Rohingya refugees endure a heavy rain in Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh, on 4 May 2018. UNCHR chief Filippo Grandi has appealed to regional Governments to offer more support to Bangladesh in addressing the ongoing refugee crisis.
RAKHINE, Myanmar, 31 July 2018 (UNFPA)* – Harlee Dar, 14, does not go to school. There are no books, TV or radio in the family’s small shelter, which is sweltering in the summer and rain-beaten during monsoon season. Asked what she does when she is not helping her mother with chores, she replies simply, “I sit. Or I lie down.”
Khin Me Me Htun – known in her community as Me Me – gives Harlee’s hand a squeeze. They are sitting in a UNFPA-supported women’s and girls’ centre in a camp for displaced Rohingyas, where Me Me is a women’s protection and empowerment counsellor.
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