Mon 05 June 2023:
On Monday, the German government approved extra funding for the persecuted Rohingya Muslims residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh and in Myanmar worth around €12 million ($13 million).
According to a news release from the German embassy in Dhaka, Susanne Fries-Gaier, director for humanitarian assistance in the German Foreign Ministry, made the decision after visiting refugee camps in south-eastern Bangladesh.
The announcement comes against the backdrop of fresh cuts to the refugees’ food vouchers triggered by a funding shortage at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), and the devastation caused by a tropical cyclone last month.
The statement said that about €5.34 million of the total allocation will go towards the WFP, given that it was was forced to reduce each refugee’s monthly food ration to the equivalent of €8.57, or $8, per person in Bangladeshi camps this month, down from $10.
Germany has already contributed €15 million this year, €2 million of which was food aid, to support the stateless Rohingya Muslims, nearly 750,000 of whom crossed into Bangladesh fleeing a military crackdown in Buddhist-majority Myanmar in 2017.
The cuts to the monthly food ration have put the lives of hundreds of thousands of refugees at risk as thousands of refugees’ homes were devastated by tropical cyclone Mocha on May 14.
Fries-Gaier, who also met Bangladeshi officials and NGO representatives during her four-day visit that ended on Monday, expressed Germany’s firm commitment to support the refugees. She stressed that the humanitarian response must be more sustainable by extending the donor base to non-traditional actors.
Any repatriation of refugees to Myanmar must happen in a voluntary, informed, dignified and lasting way, she said according to the press statement.
More than one million Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar over several decades, including about 740,000 who crossed the border starting in August 2017, when the Myanmar military launched a brutal crackdown.
Last year, the United States said the oppression of the Rohingya in Myanmar amounts to genocide after US authorities confirmed accounts of mass atrocities against civilians by the military in a systematic campaign against the ethnic minority.
The mostly Muslim Rohingya face widespread discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where most are denied citizenship and many other rights.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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