OIC official urges UNSC to play strong role in resolving Rohingya crisis

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Council has urged the UN Security Council to play a stronger role in resolving the world’s fastest growing Rohingya refugee crisis.

“The UNSC powerful members had enough room to play, but failed to do that,” OIC Assistant Secretary General Hashmi Yousuf said at a media briefing after the visit to Kutupalong Rohingya camp on Friday.    

His comment came nearly a week after an UNSC team visited Rohingya camps to take a firsthand look at the plight of some 700,000 Rohingyas who have fled Myanmar to escape military-led violence.

Yousuf pledged that the OIC will work the international community to ratchet up pressure on Myanmar to take back the Rohingyas to their homeland and discuss the issue in its session starting tomorrow in Dhaka.

The Rohingya crisis is one of the main agenda at the 45th Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers.

The delegation includes foreign ministers, junior ministers from 38 countries. The delegation will return to Dhaka to attend a dinner hosted by Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali.

The high-level delegation reached Cox's Bazar around 11am to visit the Rohingya refugee camps.

On Apr 28, a high-level 15-member delegation of the UNSC, led by its president Gustavo Meza-Cuadra, visited Cox's Bazar to hear the accounts of Myanmar army’s brutalities that Rohingyas faced. They are now travelling to Myanmar to find a solution to the crisis.

Following their visit to the refugee camps in no man’s land in Konarpara and Ukhiya’s Kutupalong where they interviewed the Rohingyas, the UNSC team promised they will try to thrash out the best possible solution after discussions at the Security Council and will not look away from the crisis.