UNFPA seeks $13 million urgently for Rohingya women, girls

UNFPA Bangladesh has sought emergency funding for reproductive health and gender-based violence response for Rohingya women and girls arriving from Myanmar.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 12 Sept 2017, 03:40 PM
Updated : 12 Sept 2017, 03:40 PM

The UN population agency said on Tuesday they need $13 million “urgently” to meet rapidly growing needs amid “a massive humanitarian crisis”.

So far, according to the UN, nearly 400,000 Rohignya refugees entered Bangladesh, taking the total number of such stateless population living in Bangladesh for decades to 800,000.

The UNFPA said the funds would be needed to provide lifesaving reproductive health and gender based violence response services to women and girls who constitute an estimated 67 percent of the new arrivals.

As in any humanitarian emergency, the risk of gender-based violence increases significantly as well putting women and girls at heightened risk.

Among the 128,000 new arrivals assessed so far by the Inter-Sector Coordination Group, 13 percent were pregnant or lactating women who were in need of life-saving maternal and newborn health care services.

“Women do not stop getting pregnant or having babies just because an emergency hits,” noted Iori Kato, Acting Representative of UNFPA Bangladesh.

“Among the UN family, UNFPA takes the lead for sexual and reproductive health as well as gender-based violence response, a responsibility we take very seriously.”

UNFPA has already deployed midwives trained in humanitarian response to complement midwives and other personnel who had already been serving in Cox’s Bazar.

These midwives are attending to the medical needs of pregnant women, mothers and their newborns, delivering babies and providing emergency obstetric care.