In a breakthrough, Myanmar has finally agreed to engage the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to help repatriate the Rohingyas.
State minister for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam disclosed this Thursday.
Quoting the UNHCR officials, he said that Myanmar has recently contacted the UNHCR seeking a meeting with them to discuss the repatriation mechanism.
Shahriar, who was talking to the reporters after a discussion meeting on the upcoming OIC foreign ministers' meeting in the capital, termed the development 'very positive'.
"Earlier, on November 23, last year, when we signed an agreement with Myanmar on repatriation, they vehemently disagreed to include the UNHCR or the UN in the (repatrtaition) process. Now they have agreed. So definitely it is a very positive and significant initiative from their side," the minister said.
The minister, however, made it clear that the government was not at all dismayed over missing the January 23 deadline for repatriation.
After the first joint working group meeting in Naypyitaw on January 15-16, Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed to start the repatriation from January 23 and end the process in two years.
"The repatriation would be completed preferably within two years from the commencement of repatriation," the foreign ministry said in a statement, following the first joint working group meeting (JWG) in Naypyitaw on January 15-16
"We are not worried over the delay as we are on the right track," he said, adding that since the process should be sustainable and voluntary, Bangladesh preferred to keep patience.
"We could repatriate 100 or 200 Rohingyas out of the 1.2 million to Myanmar to keep the deadline. But had they returned again due to the lack of a conducive environment there, the entire process would have been jeopardised." "Since we want a sustainable and safe return such a delay should not bother us as we are on the right track", the minister said explaining the reasons for the delay
"We have also been provoked by other side, but we have kept our patience and have not been derailed. We know the world community is with us and all the human rights organsiations of the world are supporting us", he added.
Referring to his recent meeting with the UN secretary general, Shahriar noted that a delegation of the UN Security Council may visit Bangladesh soon to observe the Rohingya situation. Responding to a question, the state minister said Bangladesh did not request any OIC member country to house the refugees, neither any of them volunteered to do so.
But Saudi Arabia had legalised 250 thousand Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar since 2012, he said.
Over 1.2 million Rohingyas, termed by the UN "the most persecuted people on the earth", fled their native homes in the Rakhaine state of Myanmar in the face of massive crackdown against them by the Myanmar security forces since August 25 last year.
Earlier, addressing a discussion meeting titled 'Upcoming 45th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of OIC' Shahriar said the problems of terrorism and violent extremism, sectarian violence, hatred, prejudice and Islamophobia were triggering humanitarian crises with forced displacements, affecting the rights and dignity of Muslim minorities like the Rakhine Muslims of Myanmar.
These are OIC's priorities, he said.
Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BISS), the state-run think-tank, organised the meeting.
The meetings of the Permanent Finance Committee, Economic, Social, Cultural and Family Affairs Commission (ICECS), and the senior officials in Jeddah this month largely discussed these resolutions seeking to find solutions and approaches to the ongoing problems of the Muslim Ummah.
"We see these issues being approached under four broad ranges of draft resolutions: those relating to peace, conflict resolution, mediation and security; those relating to OIC economic and development agenda; those relating to minorities and humanitarian questions and those relating to OIC reforms," said the state minister.
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