Humanitarian nightmare
Government, donors pledge more than $200 million for Rohingya
Governments and international donors pledged $234 million on Monday to help more than 600,000 Rohingya people who have fled violence in Myanmar into neighbouring Bangladesh over the last two months.
The head of the UN’s aid coordination agency said a oneday conference co-hosted by the European Union and Kuwait’s government had taken important strides in meeting a recent UN target for $434 million in aid for Rohingya refugees through February. At the start of the conference $116 million had been committed already.
Mark Lowcock, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters that new pledges Monday brought the total to $340 million.
However, OCHA spokeswoman Vanessa Huguenin clarified later that while all that money was destined for the Rohingya crisis response, not all was going to UN programs: some would help the Red Cross response or bilateral programs outside the United Nations, she said in an email.
Lowcock said more contributions were still expected, though he added he wasn’t able to immediately specify whether those would come in Monday or at a later date.
Speaking to conference attendees as the session opened, Lowcock lamented a “humanitarian and human rights nightmare” faced by Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. He said the main focus of the event was “mobilizing resources to save lives and protect people.”
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said earlier Monday that an estimated 603,000 people have fled into Bangladesh since security forces in neighbouring Myanmar launched a violent crackdown against them on Aug. 25 in the wake of militant attacks.
The influx comes on top of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who had fled into Bangladesh previously.
Lowcock also didn’t rule out that UN officials could launch a new appeal to “generous” donors again in the future, depending on how circumstances develop.
Standing beside Lowcock, Director-General William Swing of the International Organization for Migration — who was fresh off a trip to the region — said that based on current trends, “the numbers are expected to exceed a million fairly shortly.”