Chief adviser professor Muhammad Yunus on Monday called for creating a ‘safe zone guaranteed by the UN’ for the displaced people in Rakhine and finding ways to support them.
Yunus made the call when Thomas Andrews, the special rapporteur of the UN on the situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, called on him at his Tejgaon office.
The special rapporteur appreciated the chief adviser for his three-point proposals on the Rohingya crisis, which were floated on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York last month.
He said that the violence in Rakhine had created an ‘enormous crisis’ in the state, and humanitarian aid was urgently needed for the displaced and starving people, including that of Rohingyas.
The UN representative said that at least 3.1 million people had been displaced in Myanmar, including hundreds of thousands in Rakhine state, where insurgent groups had been fighting against the Myanmar military for years.
‘In recent weeks some 30,000 Rohingyas have fled their homes in Rakhine and entered Bangladesh, which is already hosting more than a million Rohingya people in camps in the country’s south-eastern Cox’s Bazar border district,’ he noted.
Professor Yunus said that creating a ‘safe zone guaranteed by the UN’ for the displaced people in Rakhine would be the best thing to get aid to them.
He added that it could be a ‘good beginning’ to resolve the crisis in Rakhine and that it could prevent thousands of new refugees from entering Bangladesh.
The chief adviser also suggested talks with the international community, including ASEAN, over the violence and displaced people in Rakhine.
He sought support from the special rapporteur to expedite the resettlement of thousands of Rohingya refugees to a third country.
The International Criminal Court investigations into the atrocities committed against the Rohingya in 2017 and the recent student-led revolution in Bangladesh were also discussed during the meeting.
