Funding gaps in joint response plan for Rohingyas concern UNHCR

Dhaka Tribune

UNB
January 27, 2023

File Photo: Over one million Rohingyas live in Bangladesh now since fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state in 2017 Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka Tribune

UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, together with the Bangladesh government will soon launch the Joint Response Plan for 2023 to appeal to donor partners for funding to meet the needs of Rohingyas in Bangladesh and the local communities hosting them here.

“We shall appeal for approximately $876 million in all relevant sectors, of which some $67 million would be required for our operations on Bhasan Char,” Johannes van der Klaauw, UNHCR representative in Bangladesh, told UNB in an exclusive interview.

Bhasan Char ကၽြန္းက ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြကူညီဖို႔ ကုလနဲ႔ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ သေဘာတူ

VOA

ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာပုိင္း)
09 ေအာက္တိုဘာ၊ 2021

ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏိုင္ငံ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းက ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္ေတြ Bhashan Char ကုိ ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ေနတဲ့ ျမင္ကြင္း။ (ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၂၉၊ ၂၀၂၀)

ျပင္သစ္ႏိုင္ငံက နာမည္ေက်ာ္ ဘိုင္ယူး စစ္သတင္းေထာက္ဆု (Bayeux Calvados- Normandy Award) အတြက္ ဒီႏွစ္ ၂၀၂၁ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ပထမဆုကို New York Times သတင္းစာက ျမန္မာဓာတ္ပုံသတင္းေထာက္ကို ခ်ီးျမႇင့္လိုက္ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ရွိေနတဲ့ ဓာတ္ပုံဆရာအတြက္ အႏၲရာယ္ရွိတာေၾကာင့္ အမည္ကိုေတာ့ ေဖာ္ျပမထားပါဘူး။

ED: How much longer will it take?

Dhaka Tribune
Tribune Editorial
June 18th, 2021

MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

We must address the root causes of the crisis, and the root lies in Myanmar

While nuance and diplomacy are no doubt crucial in international politics, should they supersede the needs of a people who have escaped indescribable pain and suffering, and wish nothing more than to go back home?

Unfortunately, when it comes to the Rohingya, the international community has been slow to move: The journey from silence to hesitant support to full-fledged condemnation has taken many powerful nations years to conclude, and this has allowed Myanmar to play dumb, break promises, delay, and worst of all, deny the Rohingya not only the right to return to their homeland of Rakhine, but even justice, refusing to acknowledge the atrocities and hold those responsible to account.

Rohingya on Bangladesh island feel trapped, fear monsoons: HRW

ALJAZEERA

7 Jun 2021

Human Rights Watch interviews 167 refugees and says they were moved ‘without full, informed consent’ and prevented from returning to the mainland.

Rohingya refugees are seen at the housing complex of Bhasan Char island after they were relocated [File: Mohammad Al-Masum Molla/AFP]

Rohingya refugees moved to a Bangladesh island fear they will be exposed to terrible conditions during the upcoming monsoon season, and are struggling with “inadequate” health and education facilities, a Human Rights Watch report said.

About 18,800 refugees have been moved from the Cox’s Bazar region – where approximately 850,000 people live in squalid and cramped conditions after fleeing Myanmar – to the low-lying silt island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal.

In a change of heart, UN hints at engagement with Rohingya at Bhasan Char

bdnews24.com
Staff Correspondent,
02 Jun 2021

Discussions are going on between the United Nations and the government of Bangladesh over the global body’s engagement in managing the Rohingya relocated to Bhasan Char island, an official of the UNHCR says.

Raouf Mazou and Gillian Triggs, assistant high commissioners at the UN refugee agency, spoke to the media in Dhaka after a meeting with Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen on Wednesday following their trips to Bhasan Char and refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.

Rohingya Refugees Protest Conditions on Remote Island

THE I DIPLOMAT

Sebastian Strangio

June 01, 2021

The protest follows reports that refugees were offered Bangladeshi citizenship to undertake the move to Bhasan Char.

Several thousand Rohingya refugees yesterday staged protests against their relocation to a remote and low-lying island in the Bay of Bengal, as senior United Nations officials paid a visit to the island.

According to one report citing local police sources, the protest involved up to 4,000

                                                                                                             A view of the Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

Credit: Russell Watkins/Department for International Development

people and coincided with an inspection visit by high-ranking officials from the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR).

Rohingya protest against living conditions on Bangladesh island

Aljazeera
1 Jun 2021

Police say 4,000 refugees demonstrated when senior UN officials arrived on remote Bhasan Char island to visit the settlement.

Rohingya seen inside a tent as they wait to get on board a ship to Bhasan Char island, in Chattogram, Bangladesh [File: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

Several thousand Rohingya refugees have staged “unruly” protests against living conditions on a cyclone-prone island off Bangladesh where they were moved from vast camps on the mainland, police said.

Since December, Bangladesh has shifted 18,000 out of a planned 100,000 refugees to the low-lying silt island of Bhashan Char from the Cox’s Bazar region, where around 850,000 people live in squalid and cramped conditions.

ကုလအရာရှိကြီး ၂ ဦး Bhasan Char ကျွန်းကိုသွားရောက် ပြီး ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်တွေနဲ့ တွေ့ဆုံ

VOA

ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာပိုင်း)
01 ဇွန်၊ 2021

Bhasan Char စခန်းမှာ ဒုက္ခသည်တွေနဲ့ တွေ့ဆုံတဲ့UNHCR အရာရှိကြီး ၂ ဦး Photo: Muaazzem Hossain Shakil/VOA

ကုလမဂ္ဂ ဒုက္ခသည်များဆိုင်ရာ မဟာမင်းကြီးရုံး UNHCR က အကြီးတန်းအရာရှိကြီး ၂ ဦးဟာ တနင်္လာနေ့မှာ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံရောက် ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည် တချို့ကို ပြောင်းရွှေ့နေရာချထားပေးနေတဲ့ Bhasan Char ကျွန်းကို သွားရောက်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။

2 senior UN officials in Dhaka; Bhasan Char visit to be finalised

The Daily Star
UNB, Dhaka
May 30, 2021

Two senior officials of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, arrived today on a four-day visit to observe the Rohingya situation in both Cox's Bazar Rohingya camps and Bhasan Char.

The UN officials are Gillian Triggs, the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Raouf Mazou, Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, a crucial role for overseeing UNHCR's responses to refugee situations worldwide.

Bangladesh's efforts for Rohingya’s in Bhashan Char an example to the world: UNGA president

theindependent

BSS, Dhaka
25 May, 2021

President of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Volkan Bozker on Tuesday highly appreciated Bangladesh's efforts for Rohingyas in Bhasan Char saying it will be another example to the world on how to deal with refugees.

"This would be another example to the world on how to deal with refugees," he said in a joint media briefing at Foreign Service Academy.

The UNGA President said he could not visit Bhasan Char but he saw a video on Bhasan Char and acknowledged the high-level works in Bhasan Char including precautions and safety measures.

Bangladesh: Rohinyga Refugees Allegedly Tortured

 

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

News Release
April 27, 2021

Investigate Security Force Beatings for Attempting to Flee Bhasan Char Island

Rohingya refugees headed to the Bhasan Char island prepare to board navy vessels from the south eastern port city of Chattogram, Bangladesh on Feb.15, 2021. © 2021 AP Photo

(New York) – Bangladesh authorities should immediately investigate allegations that security forces beat and arbitrarily detained Rohingya refugees who tried to leave Bhasan Char island, Human Rights Watch said today. The Bangladesh government has relocated nearly 20,000 Rohingya refugees to the remote island without consulting international experts to ensure their safety or determining their humanitarian needs.

Bangladesh security forces on April 6, 2021 arrested and beat at least 12 refugees who were caught trying to leave the island, restricting their freedom of movement. The authorities have not informed family members of their whereabouts. On April 12, a Bangladesh sailor allegedly beat four children with a PVC pipe for leaving their quarters to play with refugee children in another area. The authorities should immediately release any refugees who are arbitrarily detained, and hold to account those responsible for abuses.

UN Urges Bangladesh to Delay Rohingya Refugee Island Transfers

THE I DIPLOMAT
By Sebastian Strangio
April 20, 2021

The controversial island relocation plan points to the challenges facing the resolution of the refugee crisis in southeastern Bangladesh.

The United Nations refugee agency is urging Bangladesh to slow down its relocation of Rohingya refugees to an island in the Bay of Bengal until measures to protect residents from storms and flooding are fully in place, BenarNews reported on Friday.

Since December, the government has moved a total of 18,304 Rohingya from the crowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar district, close to the border with Myanmar, to Bhasan Char, an island lying some 34 kilometers offshore.

According to the report, a team from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) visited the Bhasan Char in mid-March and acknowledged that the government had made “extensive investments” in infrastructure and safeguards on the flood-prone island, but said further improvements were necessary

Rohingya relocation: UN positive about Bhasan Char

The Daily Star  

Star Digital Report
April 16, 2021

This file photo showing the aerial view of Bhasan Char shows a portion of the housing facilities that has been built on the island to relocate the Rohingyas from Cox’s Bazar. Photo: Star/File

The UN has expressed its positive attitude on the Bhasan Char project, which is meant to relocate 100,000 Rohingya from the camps in Cox's Bazar.

The UN delegation, which visited Bhasan Char on March 17-20, has already submitted a report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently.

For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.

"Overall, UN is positive about Bhasan Char," a diplomatic source told The Daily Star today.

UN team visits remote Bangladesh island where Rohingya relocated

Aljazeera
17 Mar 2021

Delegation on three-day visit to Bhasan Char island in Bay of Bengal where Bangladesh moved more than 13,000 refugees.

Bangladesh says the relocation is voluntary, but some among a first group to be moved spoke of being coerced [File: Mahmud Hossain Opu/ Al Jazeera]

A United Nations delegation is on a three-day visit starting Wednesday to a remote Bay of Bengal island where Bangladesh has moved more than 13,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees since December despite criticism from rights groups.

Bangladesh wants to eventually transfer 100,000 of the more than a million refugees living in overcrowded border camps to Bhasan Char island, which emerged from the sea only two decades ago and is considered vulnerable to floods.

ဘာဆန်းချားရောက် ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေဆီ ကုလကိုယ်စား လှယ်အဖွဲ့သွားရောက်

VOA

ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာပိုင်း)
17 မတ်၊ 2021

ဒီဇင်ဘာ ၂၉ ရက်နေ့က ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံ ဒုက္ခသည်စခန်းက ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်များ Bhashan Char သို့ ပြောင်းရွှေ့နေထိုင်တဲ့ မြင်ကွင်း။ (ဒီဇင်ဘာ ၂၉၊ ၂၀၂၁)

ကုလသမဂ္ဂအဖွဲ့ ကိုယ်စားလှယ်အဖွဲ့တဖွဲ့ဟာ ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည် ၁၀,၀၀၀ ကျော် ရွှေ့ပြောင်းထားတဲ့ ဘင်္ဂလား ပင်လယ်အော်ထဲက ဘာဆန်းချားကျွန်းကို ဒီကနေ့ ဗုဒ္ဓဟူးနေ့ကစလို့ သုံးရက်ကြာ ခရီးလာရောက်ဖို့ရှိနေပါတယ်။ ဘင်္ဂလာဒေ့ရှ်ရောက် ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်တွေကို ဝေးလံခေါင်ဖျားပြီး အန္တရာယ်ကြီးတဲ့ ဒီကျွန်းကို မပို့ဖို့ လူအခွင့် အရေးအဖွဲ့တွေက ကန့်ကွက်နေတဲ့ကြားကပဲ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်အာဏာပိုင်တွေက ပြီးခဲ့တဲ့နှစ်ဒီဇင်ဘာလကစလို့ ပြောင်းရွှေ့နေရာမှာ အခုလို အဲဒီမှာ ဒုက္ခသည် ၁၃,၀၀၀ ကျော်သွားပြီဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

Bhashan Char better for living but focus must be on Rohingya return

Dhaka Tribune
Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
March 6th, 2021

Rohingyas living in camps are trapped there for long, people are born into camps, grow up in camps and become adults in camps Syed Zakir Hossain/Dhaka Tribune

International community should support the relocation and put pressure on Myanmar to take back its people, experts tell a seminar

As compared with Cox’s Bazar, the Bhashan Char island is way better for the Rohingyas to live, but since the shelter is temporary the main focus must be given on the repatriation of the displaced people from Myanmar’s Rakhine, speakers told a seminar on Saturday.

Urging the international community not to oppose the government’s relocation plan, they requested them to put pressure on Myanmar to take its own people back with safety and dignity.

1073 more Rohingyas to be relocated to Bhasan Char Wednesday

Prothom Alo 

English Desk
02 Mar 2021

First batch of Rohingyas arrives at Bhasan Char, NoakhaliProthom Alo file photo

The government is set to relocate a group of 1,703 more Rohingyas to Bhasan Char on Wednesday, offering the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals a better life until they are repatriated, reports news agency UNB.

Buses carrying this batch of Rohingyas left Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday afternoon, said additional refugee, relief and rehabilitation commissioner Md Samsuddouza Nayan.

They are expected to reach the Chattogram transit point in Patenga in the evening. Thy will leave for Bhasan Char in the morning.

Fifth phase of relocation: 2,257 Rohingyas leave for Bhashan Char

Dhaka Tribune

Anwar Hussain, Chittagong
March 3rd, 2021

File photo: Bangladesh Navy personnel help a disabled Rohingya refugee child to get off from a navy vessel as they arrive at the Bhashan Char island in Noakhali, Bangladesh, December 29, 2020 Reuters

So far, around 14,000 Rohingyas have been relocated to the island in four phases

Some 2,257 Rohingyas left for Bhashan Char in Noakhali in the fifth phase of the relocation process on Wednesday morning.

Six ships of the Bangladesh Navy carrying the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals left the Chittagong Boat Club jetty, situated in the port city's Patenga area, around 10:30am, said National Security Intelligence (NSI) officials.

The Rohingyas, who have volunteered to be relocated to Bhashan Char developed by the Bangladesh Navy at a cost of Tk3,100 crore, were brought to Chittagong from Ukhiya in Cox's Bazar on Tuesday.

At night, they stayed at a transit camp set up on the premises of BAF Shaheen College in Patenga.

Buoyed by the success of the previous relocation, the government is continuing its effort to move some 100,000 Rohingyas to Bhashan Char in phases to provide them with a better living place.

2,207 Rohingyas sail for Bhasan Char from Chattogram

The Daily Star

Star Digital Report
March 03, 2021

This aerial view of Bhasan Char shows a portion of the housing facilities that has been built on the island to relocate the Rohingyas from Cox’s Bazar. The authorities say that the housing is ready to host 1 lakh Rohingyas. Star file photo

A total of 2,207 Rohingyas started for Bhasan Char from Chattogram in six navy ships today.

This is the fifth batch of Rohingyas refugees who agreed to be relocated to the island.

They boarded the navy ships at 10:30am from Boat Club in Patenga, and were expected to reach Bhasan Char by noon, Deputy Secretary of RRRC Md Moazzom Hossain said.

1,000 more Rohingyas relocated to Bhashan Char

Dhaka Tribune

Anwar Hussain, Chittagong
February 16th, 2021

File photo of Rohingyas board one of the ships at Chittagong Boat Club to travel to Bhashan Char on Friday, December 4, 2020 Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan/Dhaka Tribune

On Monday, some 2,010 Rohingyas reached the island in the fourth phase of relocation process 

Some 1,009 more Rohingyas have arrived at Bhashan Char in Noakhali from the camps in Cox's Bazar on the second day in the fourth phase of the relocation process.

The persecuted Myanmar citizens reached the island in the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday afternoon, after travelling from Chittagong.

Earlier, three ships of the Bangladesh Navy carrying the Rohingyas left the Chittagong Boat Club jetty in the port city's Patenga area around 11:15am, Additional Commissioner for Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC) Mohammad Shamsud Douza told the Dhaka Tribune.