US State Department: “The government of Burma, including its armed forces, must take immediate action to ensure peace and security; implement commitments to ensure humanitarian access to communities in desperate need; facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine State; and address the root causes of systematic discrimination against the Rohingya.”
October 24th, 2017-
More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have battled terror, exhaustion and hunger to reach safety in Bangladesh since Myanmar’s army began a campaign of what the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing in late August.
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The new arrivals joined more than 300,000 Rohingya who had escaped in recent years.
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The number of people crossing the Naf River that divides the two countries has slowed to about 1,000 to 3,000 a day, down from a peak of 12,000 to 18,000 a day earlier in the crisis
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More than 300,000 children are among the Rohingya refugees.
- Hundreds of thousands of refugees were crammed on a strip of land that lacked roads or infrastructure to support the delivery of aid.
- 210 hospital beds available to support more than 900,000 people living with little access to clean water, sanitation or medical care
- The refugees’ situation is a “time bomb ticking toward a full-blown health crisis”: Doctors Without Borders
- The United Nations food aid agency said that it had distributed food to 580,000 people since the crisis erupted, but that it had so far received less than one-third of the $77 million it needs to aid a million people over six months.