DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh is planning to build separate shelters for 6,000 Rohingya Muslim children who entered the country without parents to escape violence in neighboring Myanmar, a government official said Tuesday.

Children make up about 60 percent of the estimated 480,000 Rohingya Muslims who have poured into Bangladesh over the last four weeks to flee persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

Junior minister Nuruzzaman Ahmed said the social welfare ministry has asked local authorities for 200 acres of land to build facilities for the children without parents, and about 1,580 such children have already been registered.

The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF has identified about 1,800 children who fled Myanmar without parents after violence broke out on Aug. 25, but Ahmed said the total number is about 6,000.

Zillar Rahman, a senior official at the ministry, told reporters in Dhaka that the government wants to protect those children by keeping them away from adults.

“Ages between 13 and 18 are vulnerable. If they live with the adults there is a possibility of getting harmed or involved in criminal activities. So the government is thinking of separating such children who have come here without their parents,” Rahman said.

Advertisement

The U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, Scot Marciel, is planning to visit Rakhine state, where the violence has occurred, in the next two days and will go to the Bangladesh border, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told a congressional hearing in Washington on Tuesday.

Sullivan said the situation has ramifications beyond the region and requires an international response.

“It’s not a local problem, it’s a global problem and the scale is tragic,” he said.

The Trump administration announced last week it will provide nearly $32 million in humanitarian aid to help refugees displaced from Rakhine.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.