Rohingya Children


In my last post, I wrote that UNICEF was able to improve the lives of Rohingya refugees and children. However, the discrimination and persecution the Rohingya faced in Myanmar prevented many children from living a normal life. One where they could go to school and learn. They shouldn’t worry about their family getting murdered, their house getting set on fire, or them getting attacked or raped. So, how can people help? UNICEF has their own charity that they are running that will help them provide aid to a wider amount of Rohingya children in Bangladesh’s camps and in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. One way to help is by donating towards this cause, in order to help improve the lives of these children. So please, donate. The link is in the description below. Another way is by talking more about what is happening to the Rohingya, so more people can be aware of this humanitarian crisis.

UNICEF Charity: https://www.unicef.org/child-alert/rohingya-refugee-children-futures-in-balance

Rohingya and UNICEF

UNICEF is an organization created by the UN to send people all over the world to help people suffering in humanitarian crisises, such as the Rohingya genocide happening in Myanmar. So far, UNICEF has distributed an oral vaccine to more than 1.2 million refugees , along with providing drinking water to 380,000 people in Bangladesh. UNICEF also did more than just distribute resources to the refugees, such as focusing on the children in these camps. In many of Bangladesh’s camps, they made many child-friendly spaces for Rohingya children to learn and play and by protecting young girls in these camps from gender based violence. UNICEF also helped many refugee children to continue their schooling in the camp setting up learning centers and developing a curriculum to teach them at school.

Sources:

https://www.unicef.org/emergencies/bangladesh_100945.html https://www.unicef.org/child-alert/rohingya-refugee-children-futures-in-balance



Bangladesh Decides They Can’t Have the Rohingya Seek Refuge

On February 29, 2019, Bangladesh foreign secretary, Shahidul Haque, stated that Bangladesh can no longer be able to allow more refugees from Myanmar. For a long time, the Rohingya sought refuge in Bangladesh to escape the persecution they faced in Myanmar, since Bangladesh borders Myanmar. Originally, Bangladesh was praised for welcoming thousands of refugees through their border. As more refugees came though, Bangladesh was unable to handle so many people arriving. This led to Cox’s Bazar, a city in Bangladesh, to become the largest refugee camp in the world with worsening conditions. In these refugee camps, the Rohingya had to endure harsh conditions, such as monsoons, cyclones, and flooding. Meanwhile, the Rohingya would have to live in flimsy huts made out of stick and bamboo and they would have to rely on humanitarian aid in order to get food, medicine, and other supplies. Now Myanmar is expected to protect the Rohingya, even though Myanmar was unable to fufill their promise on protecting the Rohingya from attacks, as the Rohingya still faced persecution and were terrorized by the Buddhist majority in Myanmar.

Sources: http://time.com/5541706/bangladesh-no-more-rohingya-myanmar-united-nations/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/01/rohingya-crisis-bangladesh-says-it-will-not-accept-any-more-myanmar-refugees

https://www.worldvision.org/refugees-news-stories/myanmar-refugee-crisis-facts

Petition: Raising Awareness for Rohingya Refugees

Hey there! I created a petition that is meant to increase awareness for the Rohingya refugee crisis. With your signature, it would influence mainstream TV programs, like NBC or ABC, to put more attention on the Rohingya crisis. Once there is more coverage on the Rohingya crisis, it will lead to people to start researching and to actively start helping the Rohingya, such as donating money to charities for them. I hope that you will sign this petition. The link for the petition is below.

https://www.change.org/p/nbc-raising-awareness-for-rohingya-refugees

The Rohingya and the Philippines

“As the first modern Filipino leader with Muslim relatives and the first Filipino President from Mindanao, Duterte’s sensitivities towards the Ummah (global Muslim community) go far beyond that of his predecessors. As such, it remains conceivable that some Rohingya refugees could make a new home in The Philippines, ostensibly in Bangsamoro, where they share a faith with local people.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the arrival of Rohingya in Mindanao could help to demonstrate that within the framework of an autonomous political and economic model, a growing workforce could actually make the  Bangsamoro region more collectively productive. This itself would help to bolster the nationwide argument in favour of federal-parliamentary reforms, in addition to job creating FDI (foreign direct investment). Whilst few non-Muslim Filipinos tend to internally migrate to Muslim Mindanao, when the region’s economic productivity inevitably increases due to peace creating political autonomy secured by a democratic and effective parliamentary model, Bangsamoro could become a model of how a foreign workforce, when arriving in sensible numbers, can help to increased sustained regional economic activity on a win-win basis.
While Duterte’s liberal critics support the neo-imperial model that has lead to death, genocide and the displacement of millions of innocent people, Duterte’s support for human life at and home and abroad, offers a contrast which itself reveals his genuine credentials as a deeply ethical and moral leader.”

https://eurasiafuture.com/2019/02/28/duterte-the-humanitarian-is-ready-to-accept-rohingya-refugees/

In this passage, the author put a lot of information on government officials that are trying to help the Rohingya, such as the Philippines. While this is an important topic to write about there are some parts of the article the author could’ve improved on. For example, the author could have some interviews with some Rohingyas and citizens from the Philippines to hear how they feel about Duterte, since Duterte plans to have some Rohingya refugees relocate to the Philippines. The author could’ve also brought up real life examples of the neo- imperial model and its downfalls, since the author didn’t put a lot of detail on how this model could lead to genocide, the main reason why the Rohingya are leaving Myanmar.

Myanmar, World Organizations, and the Rohingya

“The brutal Burmese regime – including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi – insist that their own commission of inquiry will do the job. But we all know that perpetrators can never be trusted to deliver justice for their victims, especially for crimes of this scale.
This week, the situation may finally change. In September, the UN’s Human Rights Council agreed to establish a new independent mechanism to investigate these crimes and to prepare cases for prosecution. This was a massive step forward, and the most concrete signal this year that the international community will no longer stand idly by in the face of genocide. 

While the United Nations and United States loudly protested against these actions, some even calling it a “genocide”, Asean refrained from making any judgements and only commented on the need for a humanitarian response.
Myanmar and Bangladesh reached a deal to repatriate the first batch of refugees mid-November, but failed to implement it due to resistance from refugees who feared for their safety. The Muslim minority are treated as outsiders in the predominantly Buddhist state, where they are called “Bengali” as a rejection of their Myanmar heritage, and refused citizenship.
Myanmar delegates at the Chiang Mai meeting briefed their Asean counterparts on their perspective of the situation, but the details were not made publicly available. While the terms of reference of the needs assessment team was endorsed by a meeting of high-level strategic coordinators during Lim’s visit to Myanmar last month, a schedule for the team to visit Rakhine for its mission could not be fixed.”

https://astutenews.com/2018/12/19/will-the-world-help-the-rohingya-to-attain-justice/

In this article, the author brought up an important issue on how many Asian government officials, other than Aung San Suu Kyi, and how they are reacting to the issue. This shows how vital it is for neighboring governments to help support the Rohingya because of how their persecution by the Myanmar government was officially recognized as a genocide by the UN. Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor of Myanmar, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent approach for a democratic government. However, during her time as State Counsellor of Myanmar, she was unresponsive to violence against the Rohingya. This made her face many criticisms from several governments and organizations, which caused her to lose many of her prestigious awards. Therefore, when Aung San Suu Kyi said Myanmar would have their own investigation on the Rohingya, it would make many organizations suspicious of how the investigation is being conducted. This makes it all the more impotant that organizations like Asean, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the UN investigate such an important issue because of how the Rohingya had to endure many acts of terror under the Myanmar government.

Source:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1991/kyi/facts/

Who are the Rohingya Refugees?

Not a lot of people know who the Rohingya are. Here’s some information about them. There are about 3.5 million Rohingya in the whole world, with 1 million of them living in Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia. The Rohingya practice a Sufi- inflected version of Sunni- Islam. The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority in Myanmar and many of them are located in the Rakhine state. The Buddhist majority in Myanmar has major cultural and linguistic differences with the Rohingya, which caused some of them to take action. Many Buddhist nationalists terrorized the Rohingya either through rape, destruction of villages, or homicide. The Myanmar government also enacted many discriminatory policies against them, such as restricting them from an education, marriage, children, and many other privileges. The places where the Rohingya lived had widespread poverty, poor housing, lack of basic healthcare, and a high unemployment rate. The Rohingya aren’t even recognized by the government as citizens, even though the Rohingya can trace their ancestory from Myanmar centuries ago. All of these factors caused the Rohingya to leave Myanmar and seek refuge in bordering countries like Bangladesh or Thailand.

Sources:

https://www.facinghistory.org/educator-resources/current-events/responding-rohingya-crisis 

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/rohingya-crisis

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/rohingya-refugee-crisis-myanmar-burma-spd/

Welcome to my Blog!

Hello! My name is Vera and I go to BSGE. I am creating a blog that is about the Rohingya refugees. I am creating this campaign because I realized that not a lot of people are aware of the Rohingya genocide. Many people don’t even know who the Rohingya are. My goal for this blog is to inform people about the current situation in Myanmar and the history of the persecution of the Rohingya. Additionally, I am planning to raise $1000 for a charity that will improve the life of Rohingya refugees.