Now loan from WB, ADB for Rohingya!

The apprehension that the international community, including aid agencies and multilateral bodies are turning their backs on the Rohingya refugees – and by default Bangladesh – is gaining ground. At the time the donors decided to slash per capita food assistance from $12 to $8.0 per month – a reduction by one-third, the indication of backing out of their commitment was quite clear. Now multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have started becoming increasingly more tight-fisted. The situation for Bangladesh, the country that could not help becoming a reluctant host to the persecuted Rohingya, has turned so desperate that it now has to seek loan for the refugees from the WB and the ADB. On this issue, the Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) has not minced words to castigate the two international lenders. Of the $1.0 billion under negotiation with those two lenders-cum-donors, $535 million will be inked as a loan and the rest $465 as a grant.

It is exactly at this point, the TIB has made its objection – and for valid reasons – known. A country now facing severe foreign exchange crunch already has its multifarious obligations to perform starting from payment for energy and installment of interests on the loans taken earlier. How can donor and lending organisations now press Bangladesh to accept loans to be used for the Rohingya, victims of genocide? Glowing praise for hosting the 10 million Rohingya people evicted from their homeland is no substitute for real aid to feed this huge number of people. Yes, the international community has appreciated Bangladesh time and again but its initial generosity is now drying up. The host country has suffered a lot in terms of environmental damage, socio-cultural stress and friction between the local people and the refugees; and, of course, economic instability arising out of the presence of such a large number of outsiders in areas known for smuggling of drug and other illicit goods.

Yet Bangladesh has done all it could do for the Rohingya so that they could lead as good a life as refugees can expect. But it cannot host such a large population from another country for eternity. Since August, 2017, more than 723,000 Rohingya people were forced to flee the country, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in the face of a pogrom by the military junta of Myanmar. The world is quite aware of the barbaric treatment of the Rhingya but the current geo-politics is so fraught with self-centred and nasty calculations that there is none willing to come forward for resolving the Rohingya crisis.

The big powers have their own power games to play although they are quite vociferous to admonish weaker nations for violation of human rights, democratic norms and principles, labour rights and a host of other socio-economic values. They feel no qualms about exporting arms worth billions of dollars to be used against civilians but are quite reluctant to share their responsibility in mitigating the sufferings of the peoples like the Rohingya and the Palestinians or the Sudanese. Their double standard has actually been responsible for prolonging crises almost everywhere in what is called the Third World. Repatriation of the Rohingya is the solution to their crisis and Bangladesh should receive grants, not loans, as long as the last Rohingya leaves its soil for its home in the Rakhine Province.