We can't forget about humanity's most vulnerable

The Canberra Times

OPINION
Andrew Giles
June 19 2020

Rohingya Muslims who crossed over from Myanmar into Bangladesh, wait for their turn to collect food aid at the Cox's Bazar refugee camp in 2017. Picture: Shutterstock

It's said that crises expose and exacerbate existing structural weaknesses.

The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing and exacerbating one of our greatest weaknesses - the treatment of refugees and people seeking asylum around the world.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there are now more than 70 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, including almost 30 million refugees and more than 40 million who have fled to other parts of their own country. Last year more people were forcibly internally displaced than ever before.

နယ္စပ္က တရားမ၀င္ ၀င္လာသူေတြေၾကာင့္ ကပ္ေရာဂါ ကူးစက္မွာ ရခုိင္ေဒသခံေတြစုိးရိမ္

VOA

ဗြီအိုုေအ (ျမန္မာဌာန)

08 ဇြန္၊ 2020
ကိုႏိုင္ကြန္းအိန္

ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏိုင္ငံ Cox's Bazar ခရိုင္အတြင္းက ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းတခုမွာ ေတြ႔ရတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္တခ်ိဳ႕။ (ဧၿပီ ၀၈၊ ၂၀၁၉) 

COVID-19 ေရာဂါျဖစ္ပြားေနဆဲကာလမွာ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္နိုင္ငံ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းကေန ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေမာင္ ေတာၿမိဳ႕နယ္ဘက္ကို တရားမ၀င္ နယ္စပ္ျဖတ္ေက်ာ္ ၀င္ေရာက္လာတဲ့သူေတြေၾကာင့္ ေဒသခံေတြ စိုးရိမ္ ေနရတဲ့ အေျခအေနအေၾကာင္းကို ဗီြအိုေအျမန္မာပိုင္းသတင္းေထာက္ ကိုႏိုင္ကြန္းအိန္က တင္ဆက္ေပးပါ မယ္။

Myanmar Avoids Helping Rohingya Minority Despite International Court Order, Observers say

VOA NEWS
By Ralph Jennings
June 06, 2020

A Rohingya refugee sits with a child at the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, June 2, 2020.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Myanmar has sidelined an international court order to improve conditions for its long-embattled Rohingya minority, despite fears that the Southeast Asian government is trying to commit genocide against the group, observers say.

The U.N.’s International Court of Justice in January ordered Myanmar to "take all measures within its power" to prevent any acts of genocide against ethnic Rohingya Muslims, who fled the country amid a bloody military crackdown in 2017. The ICJ ordered Myanmar to submit a report within four months on what actions it is taking to comply with the court's decision, and to submit follow-up reports every six months after that.

WB provides $35m as help for Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar

Dhaka Tribune

Tribune Desk 
June 4th, 2020

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

 

The $35 million grant will go towards providing work opportunities and community services to the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

The World Bank (WB) has provided $35 million to Bangladesh to help ensure basic services and utilities for the Rohingyas currently residing in Teknaf and Ukhiya upazilas of Cox's Bazar.

The Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief has partnered with the UN World Food Program (WFP) to support community resilience in the Rohingya camps here.

WFP to implement $35m project for Rohingya refugees

The Daily Star

Diplomatic Correspondent
June 05, 2020

The UN World Food Programme will implement a $35 million project to provide work opportunities and community services among the Rohingya population in Cox's Bazar.

This funding is part of the World Bank's $165 million grant meant to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief. The WFP is partnering with the disaster management ministry to implement the project.

2 Rohingya refugees test Covid-19 positive in Cox's Bazar

Dhaka Tribune

Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
May 14th, 2020

One of them is from Kutupalong camp, and the other is from Camp 1E

Two Rohingyas refugees in Cox's Bazar have tested positive for Covid-19, the highly contagious and deadly disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus.

The prinicipal of Cox's Bazar Medical College and the additional refugee relief and repatriation commissioner confirmed the matter to Dhaka Tribune on Thursday.

Bangladesh: Fire damages 673 shanties in Rohingya camp

AA
Md. Kamruzzaman

DHAKA, Bangladesh 

12.05.2020

UN refugee agency will repair damaged makeshift houses immediately, says refugee commissioner 

More than 670 makeshift dwellings for Rohingya refugees in a camp across Bangladesh's southern district of Cox's Bazar were damaged in a fire on Tuesday morning, according to officials."We've been confirmed about the fire incident and are now assessing the extent of damages officially," Bangladesh's Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC) Mahbub Alam Talukder told Anadolu Agency.

No casualties were reported so far, he said. "The UNHCR [UN refugee agency] will repair the damaged tents soon."

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, UNHCR communication officer in Bangladesh Louise Donovan said that a total of 312 shelters were destroyed, with 362 more partially damaged, as well as small shops and businesses.

100 makeshift houses gutted at Ukhia Rohingya camp fire

The Daily Star

Star Online Report
May 12, 2020

At least 100 makeshift houses were gutted in a fire at Kutupalong Rohingya camp in Ukhia upazila of Cox's Bazar this morning.

The fire broke out at block-H of Rohingya camp no-1 located at Lombashiaghona around 8:55am, said Mohammad Imdadul Islam, an official of Ukhia Fire Service Station.

On information, four fire-fighting units from Ukhia , Rampu, Teknaf and Cox's Bazar rushed to the spot and brought the blaze under control after two hours of frantic efforts, said Imdadul.

Devastating fire at Rohingya camp in Cox’s Bazar

NEWAGE

Our Correspondent . Cox's Bazar

May 12,2020 

Smoke billow from debris after a fire burnt down shanties of Rohingyas at Kutupalang camp in Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday. – New Age photo

A sudden fire totally damaged at least 350 shanties and partially damaged 350 more shanties housing Rohingyas at Kutupalang refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday morning.

‘The fire broke out from a house adjacent to the camp and quickly it spread to the adjacent shanties,’ said Shamsuddoha, additional refugee, relief and repatriation commissioner.

Nowhere to flee, Rohingya refugees are struggling to survive

Dhaka Tribune

Sayedullah, Kamal, Alom Shah
May 3rd, 2020

File photo of Rohingya women and children in a camp in Cox Bazar Mahmud Hossain Opu/ Dhaka Tribune

Instead of looking forward to a better, more peaceful future, Rohingya are starting to flee again. This time, they are fleeing from Bangladesh

In 2017, when the genocidal campaign in Myanmar forced the Rohingya across the border and into Bangladesh, we came seeking refuge and safety. The country opened its borders and its hearts to almost 800,000 Rohingya and we were grateful.

Coronavirus and Rohingya Refugee Camps

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Ana Salvá

March 30, 2020

The first confirmed case in Cox’s Bazar, on March 24, is a serious concern for aid workers. 

As countries close their borders and ask their citizens to stay home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, aid organizations warn that the impact of the virus on the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh “could be enormous.” On March 24, the first case was confirmed in the local community in Cox’s Bazar, and it is now only matter of time until the virus reaches the camps, exposing the most vulnerable.

The so-called “social distancing” many countries are practicing to prevent COVID-19 seems a cruel joke to the million-plus Rohingyas who live in the overcrowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. Most of them fled the Myanmar Army-led attacks in 2016 and 2017, and at present, are living in poor conditions without access to clean water or adequate sanitation, making them especially at risk of an outbreak.

First coronavirus case confirmed in Cox's Bazar, near world's largest refugee camp

CNN

March 25, 2020

Rebecca Wright and journalist Salman Saeed 

People cross a stream in a Rohingya refugee camp on January 23 in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Allison Joyce/Getty Images

The first case of coronavirus has been confirmed in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

According to the United Nations refugee agency, a local Bangladeshi woman was confirmed to be positive on Tuesday afternoon local time.

The hospital in the town of Cox’s Bazar is around one hour’s drive from sprawling camps which are home to nearly one million Rohingya refugees.

What is being done to prevent coronavirus outbreak in Rohingya camps?

Dhaka Tribune 

Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
March 13th, 2020

File photo of Rohingya refugees at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar Syed Zakir Hossain/Dhaka Tribune

Officials putting great emphasis on prevention, as spread of infection will be difficult to contain

Health officials in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya camps are putting precautionary plans into action to prevent a potential Covid-19 outbreak, as the world faces a pandemic.

Both the government and the international agencies are putting great emphasis on placing preventive measures in the refugee camps, since it will be very difficult to deal with a situation that may arise from any infection, officials told Dhaka Tribune.

Cox's Bazar - External Situation Report (January 2020)

WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME
Source WFP
Published 27 Feb 2020

New armed police to start working in Cox’s Bazar

The Daily Star
Sunday, February 23, 2020
Mohammad Jamil Khan

A new police battalion is going to start its operation in coastal district Cox's Bazar from February 28.

The Armed Police Battalion (APBn)-16 is the second such special battalion to maintain law and order of the district and ensure security of Rohingyas.

"We will begin our operational activities in Cox's Bazar from February 28," Hemayetul Islam, commanding officer (CO) of newly formed APBn-16, told The Daily Star on Thursday.

"We are now finalising appointment of our staff members and official procedures from Dhaka," he added.

Humanitarian crisis management programme: Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh - January 2020

Cox’s Bazar ဒုက္ခသည်စခန်း ကိုရိုနာဗိုင်းရပ်စ် ကာကွယ် ရေး အခြေအနေ

VOA
ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာဌာန
 ရဲမင်းထွန်း
17 ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ၊ 2020
Coronavirus ပိုးကူးစက်မှုတွေကို ကာကွယ်ဖို့ ကမ္ဘာ့နိုင်ငံတွေဟာ နိုင်ငံရဲ့ဝင်ပေါက် ထွက်ပေါက်တွေမှာ ရောဂါ စောင့်ကြည့် စစ်ဆေး ရေးတွေ လုပ်ဆောင်နေရပါတယ်။ Coronavirus ကာကွယ်ရေး ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ် နိုင်ငံက ဘယ်လိုလုပ်ဆောင်နေပါသလဲ။ Muazzem Hossain Shakil သတင်းပေးပို့ထားတာကို ကိုရဲမင်းထွန်းက ပြောပြပေးပါမယ်။

Link : Here

Myanmar team visits Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar

Prothum Alo 

Prothom Alo English Desk
Update: 22:16, Dec 19, 2019

Rohingya refugee camp in Cox`s Bazar. File Photo

A nine-member Myanmar delegation visited Rohingya camp in Cox's Bazar on Wednesday and interacted with Rohingyas in an effort to convince them to return to their homes in Rakhine state, reports UNB. 

They will talk to Rohingyas at the camp on Thursday before they leave Cox's Bazar for Dhaka in the afternoon, an official told UNB.

ISCG Situation Report: Rohingya Crisis - Cox's Bazar | September 2019

The Hague Conclave on Justice and Accountability for the Rohingya held

Dhaka Tribune
Tribune Desk
October 19th, 2019

File photo: Rohingya refugees stretch their hands to receive aid distributed by local organisations at Balukhali makeshift refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 14, 2017 Reuters

The event was held on October 18 which was organized by the Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ), BRAC University

The Hague Conclave on Justice and Accountability for the Rohingya has brought together critical issues for consideration by the international community.

The event was held on October 18, 2019 in the Hague, Netherlands which was organized by the Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ), BRAC University, said a press release.

Having taken note of the abiding generosity and prompt humanitarian response by the Bangladesh government in support of the Rohingyas, the Conclave underscored the importance of the United Nations, relevant member states and regional bodies to each play a role in calling out the impunity of the Myanmar authorities, and finding a long term, viable and acceptable resolution to the Rohingya crisis.