The UK has lauded Bangladesh for continuously playing a vital role in hosting the Rohingyas, but observed that the overall human rights situation in the country in 2019 saw no improvement.

“We are the same human being like you and need the same basic rights which you enjoy. Please don’t hate us. We don’t want to be a burden. Allow us to study and work, and stand by us. We will surely return home.”

Rohingya activists have urged the host countries to stop hatred against them and treat them as human beings, saying the refugees, who have fled genocidal acts in Myanmar, are now facing a higher level of xenophobia amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that India “fully understands the urgency of an early, safe and sustainable repatriation of displaced persons from Myanmar’s Rakhine state in the interest of all”.

Speakers at a virtual discussion have lauded the government’s early planning and joint efforts with the UN and humanitarian partners to limit the transmission of coronavirus in the congested Rohingya camps in Bangladesh.

The European Union has announced €32 million (around Tk 304 crore) for some one million Rohingyas sheltered in Cox’s Bazar and Bangladeshi host communities, an EU Delegation in Dhaka said in a statement today.

The Cox’s Bazar Civil Society Organisations and NGO Forum (CCNF), a network of more than 50 local and national NGOs, has urged the UN to revise the conditions of allocating a $4 million USD emergency coronavirus fund to ensure participation of local NGOs in the humanitarian response for Rohingyas.

UK International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan has said they are strongly committed to helping Bangladesh and the Rohingya people through this devastating crisis.

UN and other aid agencies are concerned that the monsoon will exacerbate the already dire situation in the Rohingya camps where almost 860,000 refugees live in crammed accommodations, many of which are located in hazardous terrain.

Amid worsening socioeconomic conditions caused by coronavirus, the Rohingya children living in the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar face heightened risk of violence including child trafficking, child labour and child marriage, child rights organization Educo said today.

It is concerning to learn that out of USD 308.7 million sought from the international community for the Rohingyas for 2020, only USD 87 million or 27 percent of that has been given as of May, according to the UN Refugee Agency.

India and China on Saturday each traded accusations that the other had violated their shared de facto border, an area that this week became the site of the deadliest clash in half a century between the two nuclear-armed giants.

The Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN), Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), and Progressive Voice (PV) call upon ASEAN leaders to address growing xenophobia toward undocumented migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.

We are living in unprecedented times. The Covid-19 pandemic has spread like wildfire around the world, consuming lives, shattering livelihoods and changing the ways we live in profound and possibly lasting ways. We are in the fight of our lives and, at the same time, another human tragedy continues to smoulder and burn: the global displacement crisis.

The global funding for the Rohingyas may fall short as the non-government organisations’ (NGO) activities have drastically decreased amid coronavirus pandemic.

The number of people killed in a tanker truck explosion on a highway in eastern China has climbed to 19, with more than 170 injured, local authorities said Sunday.

Bangladesh has said the principle of burden- and responsibility-sharing should be central to the actions of the international community in addressing humanitarian situations.

Bangladesh has outright rejected a reported Malaysian plan to ask Dhaka to take in 269 Rohingyas who managed to land on its soil, with the foreign minister saying Dhaka was neither obligated nor willing to do so.

A total of 677 Bangladeshi citizens, most of whom are migrant workers, have returned from Kuwait, UAE and Maldives by three separate special flights since Monday.

Malaysian authorities detain 269 Rohingya refugees and find a body on board a suspected smuggling boat they say was intentionally damaged so it couldn’t be turned back to sea.