UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres and World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim, were in the south-eastern Bangladeshi district of Cox’s Bazar on Monday to witness the plight of Rohingya refugees driven away from their homes in Myanmar.
Guterres and Kim arrived in Dhaka at the weekend to advocate for increased donor support for the refugees.
The Head of the district administration, Kamal Hossain, said “both chiefs of the UN and the World Bank are scheduled to talk to the refugees in the camps, members of the aid agencies and the local officials.”
According to him, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister, Abu Hassan Mahmood Ali and UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Fillipo Grandi, are among others accompanying Guterres and Kim to the camps.
No fewer than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims crossed into Bangladesh after the Myanmar military launched brutal clampdown on Muslim insurgents on Aug. 25 in Rakhine state which left several hundred people killed and many women raped.
The UN said the crackdown was a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.
Guterres, who met with Prime Minister Hasina on Sunday, praised Bangladesh for giving a safe haven to the Rohingya refugees, “driven from their homes by systematic and widespread violence.
“In a world where so many borders are closed, but the people and government of Bangladesh opened their borders and received their brothers and sisters from Myanmar and from the terrible events there is highly commendable,” Guterres stressed. (dpa/NAN)
https://www.africaprimenews.com/2018/06/13/news/protecting-the-rights-of-1-5bn-people-living-with-disabilities-a-moral-imperative-un-chief/