UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has lauded the European Union for its multi-year contribution of EUR 14 million (around Tk 139 crore) to support UNHCR’s assistance for Rohingyas and Bangladeshi host communities in Cox’s Bazar, reports BSS.
“In these unprecedented and immensely challenging times, our life-saving and essential work, and the overall humanitarian response in support to the Government of Bangladesh, would not be possible without the EU’s sustained support and commitment to Rohingya refugees and local communities in Bangladesh”, said Steve Corliss, UNHCR Representative in Bangladesh.
The EU is one of the long-standing donors for UNHCR Bangladesh since 2005, an UHCR press release said here today.
“This funding provided to UNHCR is an important contribution to Bangladesh’s continuous generosity and humanity in hosting Rohingya who fled neighbouring Myanmar”, said Ambassador Rensje Teerink, Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Bangladesh.
It is part of the Team Europe global response to COVID-19 in the country to address the refugee crisis worsened by the pandemic, she added.
This new contribution will support the joint Bangladesh-UNHCR registration exercise, which enhances assistance and protection of Rohingyas in Bangladesh, ensuring efficient access to aid and targeted protection for those with specific needs.
The contribution will also support camp management, promote the empowerment of Rohingyas and host communities, enhance peaceful co-existence between the communities, as well as support the COVID-19 response, including mitigating the socio-economic impact of the virus in Cox’s Bazar, said the release.
Since August 25 in 2017, Bangladesh is hosting over 1.1 million forcefully displaced Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar district and most of them arrived there after a military crackdown by Myanmar, which the UN called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and other rights groups dubbed as “genocide”.
In the last three years, not a single Rohingya went back home although Myanmar agreed to take them back to their motherland.