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Who will take care of 14,000 Rohingya orphans?

According to an estimate at least 14,000 Rohingya children currently staying in refugee camps in Bangladesh are orphans.

By Oneindia
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Google Oneindia News

Dhaka, Oct 19: Be it a war or a natural disaster, it's the children and women who suffer the most. Now, when thousands of Rohingya Muslims are fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh to save themselves from violence and persecution allegedly unleashed by the Myanmarese military, it has left behind in its trail thousands of children "orphans".

According to Bangladesh, which has given shelter to the Rohingya refugees in its camps in Cox's Bazar, at least 14,000 Rohingya children have lost one or both parents.

rohingyas

In fact, as high as 582,000 Rohingyas have come to Bangladesh to seek safe haven since violence erupted in the Rakhine State of Myanmar on August 25. Most of these refugees are children, stated the United States (UN).

As per the UN, every day thousands of Rohingyas continue to risk their lives as they trudge through difficult terrains connecting Myanmar to Bangladesh.

During these risky journeys, several Rohingyas have already lost their lives and failed to reach the refugee camps set up in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh's social services department said 13,751 children without a parent or parents were identified in a survey of the crowded refugee camps along its border, where charities warn that a humanitarian crisis is unfolding.

"The majority of them said they lost one or both parents in the violence in Rakhine," Pritam Kumar Chowdhury, a department deputy director, told AFP.

"Others said they didn't know what happened to their parents, and they came to Bangladesh with relatives."

The UN has described the violence in Rakhine as a textbook case of ethnic cleansing, with displaced Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh describing whole villages being razed, gang rapes and massacres.

Those who survived and fled to Bangladesh include an estimated 320,000 children, one-third of whom are under five years of age.

Bangladesh is building the world's largest refugee camp--a sprawling three thousand acre (1,200 hectare) settlement--capable of housing 800,000-plus Rohingya.

Last month a junior minister asked that 200 acres be set aside in the camp for children's facilities.

Chowdhury said an orphanage would be built for unaccompanied minors, and those without a parent would be given extra assistance and familial support.

Aid agencies have warned there is a real concern that vulnerable children could be victims of abuse or trafficking.

Meanwhile, at a time when security agencies are casting aspersions on Rohingya refugees, citing their possible links with terror outfits, a senior official from Bangladesh stated that the refugees "can't be termed as terrorists".

"60 per cent refugees (Rohingyas) are ladies, children and elderly. With such a huge population, they can't be termed as terrorists," Bangladesh's High Commissioner to India, Syed Muazzem Ali, told reporters at Foreign Correspondents' Club in Delhi on Monday.

OneIndia News

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