More than half of the Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar in the past three weeks are children, including hundreds who traveled without family members, putting them at particular risk in cramped, muddy camps in Bangladesh, aid workers say.
The New York Times and different other international media published such report.
According to the report, nearly 400,000 Rohingya people have fled government violence in Myanmar and crossed into neighboring Bangladesh. The majority of them are children — 60 percent, by U.N. estimates. And over 1,200 are separated from their parents.
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that two-thirds of the refugees are women and girls, 13 percent of whom are pregnant or breast-feeding. It has sent dozens of midwives to help in the camps.
The challenges for aid groups are unfathomable with a refugee crisis this large, caused by what Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, says seems to be "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing."
The situation is even more daunting when so many children are at risk.
The United Nations says the Rohingya refuges are now struggling to find food, shelter and clean water in Bangladesh. “The camps are totally overcrowded,” said Christophe Boulierac, a spokesman for Unicef. “It’s very muddy and raining every day.”
Of those who have made it to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, about half arrived last week, Mr. Boulierac said, placing extreme pressure on the already struggling relief operations. “Very frankly speaking, we are scaling up, but it is such an unprecedented influx,” he said.
As of Friday, Unicef had counted 1,267 children at the camp who had been separated from their families. Amid the disorder of the rapidly expanding settlements in Bangladesh, the unaccompanied children are at particular risk for human trafficking, sexual abuse, child labor and child marriage, Mr. Boulierac said.
Unicef has set up 41 spaces for children to relax and play, some of which can be moved around the camps. The sites also make it easier for aid workers to identify which children have traveled alone or have been separated from their families.
The needs of the children include food and nutritional support, basic health care and psychological counseling. More than 18,000 children have received help through the child-friendly spaces since Aug. 25. But with more than 230,000 children estimated to have arrived in Bangladesh, many more will need help, Mr. Boulierac said.
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that two-thirds of the refugees are women and girls, 13 percent of whom are pregnant or breast-feeding. It has sent dozens of midwives to help in the camps.
And the numbers are likely to grow, Mr. Boulierac said. “The worrying news is we don’t see any indication that this influx is decreasing.”
The military and Buddhist vigilantes of Myanmar have burned villages and massacred civilians, according to human rights groups and refugees. Bangladesh has also complained to Myanmar about reports of land mines placed along their shared border, which have injured and killed civilians in recent weeks.
Journalists and human rights investigators have been largely barred from Rakhine. A group of journalists was taken there on a government-supervised trip last week, and some reported seeing Buddhist men leaving a Rohingya village they had just set ablaze.
The lack of access has forced human rights groups to rely on satellite data and the testimony of people who have fled to document the extent of destruction. Amnesty International said Thursday that it had recorded 80 large-scale fires in Rakhine since Aug. 25, while the same period in the past four years had no blazes of such size on record.
Human Rights Watch said Friday that 62 villages in Rakhine had been targeted by arson since Aug. 25. “Our field research backs what the satellite imagery has indicated — that the Burmese military is directly responsible for the mass burning of Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine State,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
BDST: 1740 HRS, SEP 16, 2017
EHJ
