UN signs Myanmar access deal
■ The pact will grant United Nations reach to epicentre of the crisis
Yangon, June 6: The UN inked a deal with Myanmar on Wednesday that would grant the organisation access to the epicentre of the Rohingya crisis, but provided few details on how the agreement would jumpstart stalled repatriation plans.
Some 700,000 people from the stateless minority fled over the border from Myanmar to Bangladesh after the military launched a crackdown on Rohingya insurgents last August that the UN has called “ethnic cleansing”.
The two countries signed a repatriation deal in November but fears of safety and a lack of rights in Myanmar mean only a couple dozen of the longpersecuted minority have chosen to return.
The UN said few concrete details were decided in the newly- signed “framework” agreement that took months to draft.
Its agencies will initially carry out assessments in Rakhine state, which has been largely closed off to outsiders since the crisis began.
“The work so far has been to open the door,” UN Myanmar resident coordinator Knut Ostby told AFP, saying he could not confirm the extent of the access UN teams would be given or which areas would be prioritised.
Giuseppe De Vincentiis, the Myanmar representative for the UN refugee agency, said they hope to start “as soon as possible,” adding that the initial assessment phase would be completed in the coming months.
But any large- scale refugee repatriation is still a long way off.
“Based on our reading, the situation at the moment is not conducive for repatriation,” De Vincentiis said, emphasising that he hoped the deal would eventually enable refugees to make a “well- informed” decision about whether to return or not.