Int'l community pledges $340m more to help Rohingyas in BD

In addition to the $116 million raised since the beginning of the Rohingya crisis, the international community has now pledged an additional US$340 million to meet the needs of Rohingyas living in Bangladesh, report agencies.

Following the conclusion of the pledging conference in Geneva Monday, the United Nations will follow up to ensure that all the pledges are realised and the funds are swiftly released, while it will continue to look for ways to meet the growing needs amongst the refugee and host communities.

"This will allow aid agencies provide life-saving assistance, including shelter, food, clean, water, sanitation, health, nutrition and protective services, and prevent a further tragedy from occurring within this current crisis," said UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh Robert D Watkins while speaking at the pledging conference.

More than 600,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh since violence erupted in northern Rakhine in August, a UN report said

The latest influx has brought the total number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to an estimated 900,000.

Shameem Ahsan, Bangladesh's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told the meeting his country was facing an "untenable situation."

He said the Bangladeshi government was negotiating with Myanmar on the issue, but that Myanmar continued to insist that Rohingya were illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

The Rohingya themselves maintain that they are indigenous to western Rahkine, with roots reaching back over a thousand years.

Nearly 1.0 million Rohingya refugees have fled violence in Myanmar, an "untenable situation" for Bangladesh, the country's UN envoy said, calling on Myanmar to let them return.

"This is the biggest exodus from a single country since the Rwandan genocide in 1994," Shameem Ahsan told the UN pledging conference.

"Despite claims to the contrary, violence in Rakhine state has not stopped. Thousands still enter on a daily basis," he said.

Bangladesh's interior minister was in Yangon on Monday for talks to find a "durable solution", Ahsan said.

But Myanmar continued to issue "propaganda projecting Rohingyas as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh", Ahsan said, adding: "This blatant denial of the ethnic identity of Rohingyas remains a stumbling bloc".

Myanmar considers the Rohingya to be stateless, despite tracing their families' presence in the country for generations.

At the pledging conference for the Rohingya crisis, the international community came together and vowed to stand with the Rohingyas in Bangladesh, committing to provide US$340 million to the ongoing humanitarian response.

At the beginning of October, the humanitarian community in Bangladesh released a Response Plan that called for $434 million.

Since then, the number of Rohingyas in Bangladesh has continued to rise with tens of thousands of people still making the journey across the border every week.

Prior to the pledging conference, the Response Plan was funded at only 27 per cent.

The commitments delivered at the conference were an opportunity for the international community to collectively mobilise resources to provide life-saving assistance to refugees, and members of the host community, in Cox's Bazar.

Watkins said, "This is now the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world and there's an urgent need for further funding to enable us to scale up humanitarian operations."

He said they are grateful to the government of Bangladesh, which has kept their border open, and to the host communities who have been so generous in supporting the new arrivals.