UN Secretary-General António Guterres calls on the international community to urgently provide humanitarian support to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims living in the horrific conditions of Bangladesh refugee camps.
“These people desperately need to support the dignity of living in Bangladesh,” Guterres told reporters on Friday during a visit to the Rohingya refugee camp in the southeastern region of Cox Bazar.
The UN chief condemned the recent cuts in Western countries to reduce humanitarian aid to “crime” and promised to interact with the state to obtain sufficient funds.
Guterres arrived in Bangladesh on Thursday for a four-day official visit, and went to the camp to see firsthand the hardships facing the Rohingya community. He also spoke with Rohingya women at the camp, community leaders and members of the aid agency.
During his visit, thousands of Rohingya gathered at a rally organized by locally, holding placards including: “United Nations, take us home.”
To excel, Guterres attended an IFTAR with Bangladesh Interim Executive Director Muhammad Yunus – a dinner that fasts daily during Ramadan with refugees.
Currently, Bangladesh has occupied more than one million Rohingya Muslims in Cox's Bazar and Bhasan Char, an offshore island in the Bay of Bengal. They fled violence in Burmese Buddhist Buddhism, and more than 750,000 Rohingya crossed the border after a brutal military crackdown in August 2017. All of this depends entirely on humanitarian assistance.
Earlier this month, the United Nations World Food Programme warned that without sufficient funds, the price of food rations could drop from $12.50 per person to just $6 per month.
