Children exploited in Rohingya camps in B’desh, says report

Rohingya refugee children from Myanmar are working punishing hours for paltry pay in Bangladesh, with some suffering beatings and sexual assault, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has found.

The results of a probe by the IOM into exploitation and trafficking in Bangladesh’s refugee camps, which Reuters reviewed on an exclusive basis, also documented accounts of Rohingya girls as young as 11 getting married, and parents saying the unions would provide protection and economic advancement.

About 450,000 children, or 55% of the refugee population, live in teeming settlements near the border with Myanmar after fleeing the destruction of villages and alleged murder, looting and rape by security forces and Buddhist mobs.

Afjurul Hoque Tutul, additional superintendent of police in Cox’s Bazar, near where the camps are based, said 11 checkpoints had been set up to help prevent children from leaving.

“If any Rohingya child is found working, then the owners will be punished,” he said.

The IOM’s findings, based on discussions with groups of longterm residents and recent arrivals, and separate interviews by Reuters, show life in the refugee camps is hardly better than it is in Myanmar for Rohingya children.

The IOM said children were targeted by labour agents and encouraged to work by their parents amid widespread malnutrition and poverty in the camps.

Rohingya boys and girls as young as seven years old were confirmed working outside the settlements.

Boys work on farms, construction sites and fishing boats, as well as in tea shops and as rickshaw drivers. Girls work as maids and nannies for Bangladeshi families, either in the nearby resort town of Cox’s Bazar or in Chittagong, about 150 km away.

Most interviewees said female Rohingya refugees “experienced sexual harassment, rape and being forced to marry the person who raped her”, the IOM said.

The Inter Sector Coordination Group, which oversees UN agencies and charities, said this month it had documented 2,462 unaccompanied children in the camps. The actual number was “likely to be far higher”, it said.

Many parents also pressure their daughters to marry early, for protection and for financial stability, according to the IOM findings. Some child brides are as young as 11, the IOM said.

But many women only became “second wives,” the IOM said. Second wives are frequently divorced quickly and “abandoned without any further economic support”. REUTERS

COX’S BAZAR: A PRELIMINARY SURVEY BY UNHCR AND B'DESH’S REFUGEE RELIEF AND REPATRIATION COMMISSION FOUND 5% OF HOUSEHOLDS OR 3,576 FAMILIES WERE HEADED BY A CHILD