In mid-October, Enamur Rahman, Bangladesh’s state minister in charge of disaster management and relief, said 350 Rohingya families or about 3,000 people had responded positively to the government’s request that they relocate to Bhashan Char this month. The island is 21 nautical miles from Noakhali district in Chittagong
The children’s rights group, Save the Children, says a high number of Rohingya refugee children are suffering from severe mental health problems
The Bangladesh government announced plans almost two years ago to relocate about 100,000 Rohingya to the island. Since then the government has been constructing a housing complex, a retaining wall to protect from flooding and cyclone shelters
Some of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled a brutal military-led crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in 2017 and sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh say they have not been able to go back to their original villages after returning to Rakhine of their own volition
Following Wednesday’s meeting in New York, Myanmar’s Union Minister Kyaw Tin said his government is working with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the U.N., and partner nations “to implement the repatriation process,” and that Myanmar, China, and Bangladesh had agreed to form a “working group” to address the situation
A brutal military-led campaign of violence targeting the Rohingya in Rakhine state in 2017 left thousands dead and drove more than 740,000 others across the border to Bangladesh where they now reside in sprawling displacement camps
Ragu Nay Myint from a Yangon-based humanitarian assistance group that helps Hindus chastised international organizations for ignoring the plight of the Hindus in Rakhine
Several repatriation attempts by Myanmar and Bangladesh governments have failed. The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said that none of those interviewed among the 3,450 people cleared for repatriation in the most recent attempt were willing to go back to Myanmar because they were concerned over their security
Access to education in Bangladesh’s Rohingya refugee camps is limited at the early primary school level. So alternative lifeskills training is being offered to help fill the gap. Teenage refugees are being taught skills that will help them earn money and cope with daily difficulties
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees were seriously traumatized when Burmese troops launched a brutal “clearance operation” in August 2017 that forced them to flee Myanmar for neighboring Bangladesh