On his first trip to a remote and flood-prone island where Bangladesh has been relocating Rohingya, the UN Refugee Agency chief agreed to boost support for the shift, despite concerns people were moved there against their will.
Speaking to reporters in Dhaka on Wednesday, High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi promised to 'step up our presence' on the island.
Bangladesh aims to eventually relocate around 100,000 Rohingya refugees to the previously uninhabited Bhashan Char to ease overcrowding in the sprawling network of camps near Cox's Bazar.
Around 920,000 members of the stateless Muslim minority are currently packed into squalid border camps, reliant on aid after they fled violence and a 2017 military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.
While Bangladesh was praised for taking in refugees escaping a military campaign that the United States has since said amounted to genocide, five years later Dhaka has had little success finding them permanent homes
Last year, the UNHCR signed a deal with Bangladesh authorities to help aid and protect refugees on Bhashan Char, where around 20,000 refugees have already been shifted.
'Much has already been done (in Bhashan Char) by Bangladeshi NGOs and now by the UN agencies with the government,'Grandi said on Wednesday. 'We need to do more and I agree with the government who has urged me to step up.'
But with only 13 percent of the UNHCR'S $881 million annual response plan for the Rohingya currently funded, Grandi acknowledged it would be a struggle.
'I am a bit worried... first of all, here there is more needs because there is Bhashan Char, and now with Ukraine and Afghanistan and a lot of other competing crises we will struggle a bit.'
Watchdog Human Rights Group has said that Rohingya leaders have been coerced into persuading camp residents to move to Bhashan Char, while hundreds already sent there have since been arrested in coastal towns after fleeing the island.
About 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the mainland, Bhashan Char sits at the heart of an estuary prone to powerful cyclones.
Grandi met with Rohingya refugees both in the camps and on the island, as well as with Bangladesh's Prime Minister during a five-day visit he said was meant to call back international attention to the situation.
'I’m here to remind the international community that there is not just Ukraine and new crises. But Bangladesh has been bearing the responsibility for five years. And this support cannot decline,' he said.
AFP
