UN appeals for scaling up funds for Rohingya in Bangladesh

By SM Najmus Sakib

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) - The UN has appealed for scaling up funds for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

The UN also made a fresh allocation of $8 million on Wednesday for Rohingya refugees staying in camps in Bangladesh’s southeastern Cox’s Bazar district and on the island of Bhasan Char.

“This allocation is especially important in light of the funding shortfall in the humanitarian support for the Rohingya refugee response. The refugees remain entirely dependent on international community funding and are in need of help,” said Gwyn Lewis, the UN resident coordinator.

The UN Refugee Agency and its partners launched the Joint Response Plan in March with an appeal of $876 million to reach 1.47 million people for sustained financial support and solutions for Rohingya refugees and the Bangladeshi communities that are hosting them as the dire situation enters its sixth year.

As of Sept. 6, funds for the Joint Response Plan only reached 30.6% of the appeal, according to a statement from the UN resident coordinator.

More than 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims forcibly displaced from Myanmar live in congested camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh and Bhasan Char, an island in the Bay of Bengal.

Most of the refugees fled a brutal military crackdown in August 2017 in Rakhine, a state on the western coast of Buddhist-majority Myanmar.