COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Bangladesh needs “massive international assistance” to feed and shelter the 436,000 Rohingya who have fled Myanmar in recent weeks, the head of the UN refugee agency said on Sunday.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said there were “immense” challenges after visiting the overflowing camps around Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh.
“I was struck by the incredible magnitude of their needs. They need everything — they need food, they need clean water, they need shelter, they need proper health care,” he told reporters.
Grandi said there had been an “incredible outpouring of local generosity” but that now needed to be “beefed up by massive international assistance, financial and material”.
“That’s partly why I am here, to help... the government organise that response,” he said.
The UN said on Sunday that 436,000 Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority, had arrived from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since an outbreak of violence there a month ago.
Grandi said the influx had slowed in recent days but it was impossible to tell whether more would come.
He also said his office was providing “technical assistance” to help Bangladesh register the Rohingya, whom Myanmar considers to be illegal immigrants.
Bangladesh only recognises a tiny fraction of around 700,000 Rohingya living in camps near the border with Myanmar as refugees, referring to the rest as undocumented Myanmar nationals.
It has “no plan for the time being” to grant refugee status to the newly-arrived Rohingya, senior Bangladesh minister Amir Hossain Amu said on Sunday.
“We want Rohingya to return to their own land,” said Amu, who chairs a cabinet committee on national security.
Mobile phone ban: Bangladesh has banned telecommunication companies from selling mobile phone connections to Rohingya refugees, citing security concerns for the latest restrictions, officials said on
Sunday.
Bangladesh’s four mobile phone providers were threatened with fines if they provide any of the nearly 430,000 newly arrived refugees from Myanmar with phone plans while the ban is in force. — AFP
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