A visiting US Assistant Secretary of State has said Rohingyas deserve Burmese citizenship to end their statelessness, which she identified as a root cause of their plight and displacement.
Published : 21 Jan 2015, 02:55 PM
Anne Richard of the Department of Population, Refugees and Migration made the observation in a seminar in Dhaka on Wednesday.
She said the Rohingya population remained stateless as “they are not recognised as a distinct ethnic group in the country’s citizenship law”.
“Statelessness is… a key reason they flee to neighbouring countries,” she said.
The Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) organised the seminar styled ‘US policy on refugee, migration and population dynamics’ for the visiting official.
Richard arrived in Dhaka on Tuesday from Myanmar on a four-day tour, her first after she joined the post in Washington in 2012, “to learn from the Bangladesh perspective” of the situation of the refugees here.
Both Bangladesh and the US deal with the issues of refugees, migration and population dynamics.
Migration and population dynamics are the two issues Bangladesh is pressing for inclusion as separate development factors in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Rohingya refugee issue is a major irritant in Bangladesh-Myanmar relations.
Bangladesh has given shelter to thousands of refugees who fled the Rakhine province following sectarian clashes spread over the years, but Myanmar refused to grant them citizenship.
UNHCR, the UN agency looking after refugee interests, put the number in Bangladesh at over 200,000 with 30,000 documented refugees living in two government-run camps – the Kutupalong and Nayapara – within two kilometres of the Myanmar border.
Bangladesh government says more than 500,000 of them are living outside the camps here.
Chairman of the BIISS Board of Governance Munshi Faiz Ahmed said the US, as the most powerful country, also had the responsibility to help resolve the problem.
He said given the density of its population “it is difficult for Bangladesh to welcome new migrants”.
“We hope arrangements should be made inside Myanmar,” he said, hoping that “the US is aware of the problem and its solution as well”.
Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque, who worked for 11 years with the International Organisation of Migration, however, lauded the US role on the issue.