Save the Children steps in to prevent ‘child protection disaster’ in Rohingya camps

The Save the Children will provide financial support tuning up to $90 million by next year, to address the Rohingya crisis especially to prevent child protection disaster waiting to happen.

The aid will also help improve the lives of Rohingya children.

Chief executive officer of the international NGO Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a former Danish prime minister, made the announcement after visiting the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar where she found children at an “alarming risk of exploitation and abuse”.

“It’s a child protection disaster waiting to happen,” she said at a press briefing in Dhaka Saturday. adding "this kind of situation leaves children to the risk of exploitation of trafficking, sexual abuse and child labour."

"They have already seen and experienced things that no child should ever see." 

She pointed out that overcrowding, a lack of schooling and widespread desperation among the Rohingya people, and makeshift settlements are putting those children at risk.

“One of the best ways we can protect children in this situation is to get them into classrooms; a safe space where they can learn, and can also benefit from things like psychosocial support and hygiene promotion,” she said. “In a crisis like this, education is incredibly important for children”.

“There are huge child protection concerns in the camps. A lot of desperate, hungry children are running around alone in crowded, chaotic settings where anything could happen,” she said, expressing grave concern about the number of separated and unaccompanied Rohingya children in Bangladesh.

Since late August, more than 537,000 displaced Rohingya people, among them 60 percent children, have arrived in Cox’s Bazar, marking the most massive humanitarian crisis in Asia in recent time.

Thorning-Schmidt thanked the government of Bangladesh for the sheltering them.

The Save the Children said her visit reinforced mobilisation the urgently needed resources to provide life-saving humanitarian support to the Rohingya people, especially for the children.