Rohingya kids feel suffering

– Nearly 340 000 Rohingya children are living in squalid conditions in Bangladesh camps where they lack food, clean water and healthcare, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said yesterday.

Up to 12 000 more children join them every week, fleeing violence or hunger in Myanmar – often still traumatised by atrocities they witnessed, it said in a report “Outcast and Desperate”.

In all, almost 600 000 Rohingya refugees have left northern Rakhine state since August 25, when the UN says the Myanmar army began a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” following insurgent attacks.

“This isn’t going to be a shortterm; it isn’t going to end any time soon,” Simon Ingram, the report’s author said.

“It is critical that the borders remain open and that protection for children is given and equally that children born in Bangladesh have their birth registered.”

Most Rohingya are stateless in Myanmar and many fled without papers, he said, adding of the newborns in Bangladesh: “Without an identity they have no chance of ever assimilating into any society effectively.”

Safe drinking water and toilets are in “desperately short supply” in the chaotic, teeming camps and settlements, Ingram said after spending two weeks in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. “It’s no surprise that they truly see this place as a hell on earth,” he said.

One in five Rohingya children under the age of five is estimated to be malnourished. – Reuters

Geneva

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