Angelina Jolie visits Bangladesh Rohingya camp before new appeal for $920m fund

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has visited a Rohingya camp in Cox’s Bazar before the launch of a new appeal for $920 million funds for the refugees in Bangladesh.

The special envoy of the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR started for the Chakmarkul camp at Hoikyang in Teknaf after a half-an-hour break at a hotel on her arrival in the resort town on Monday morning.

The Oscar-winning actress is in Bangladesh on a three-day mission to assess the humanitarian needs of the Rohingya refugees and some of the more critical challenges facing Bangladesh as a host country.

Her visit comes prior to the launch of a new appeal for the humanitarian situation in Bangladesh – the 2019 Joint Response Plan – which seeks to raise some $920 million to continue meeting the basic needs of Rohingya refugees and the communities hosting them.

The special envoy focuses on major forced displacement crises, representing UNHCR and the high commissioner at the diplomatic level.

 

During the visit to the refugee camp, she spoke to the Rohingya women who fled a violent army operation launched in Myanmar on Aug 25, 2017, Cox’s Bazar Superintendent of Police Iqbal Hossain told bdnews24.com citing UNHCR officials.

The Rohingya women described the persecution and violence they had suffered in Rakhine State during the conversations with Jolie, the SP said.

The actress was scheduled to visit the transit camp built for repatriation of the Rohingyas at Damdamia, according to Iqbal.  

After spending the night at the hotel, she will visit several camps, including the D-5 camp at Kutupalong, the largest refugee settlement anywhere in the world today. The majority of refugees – more than 620,000 people – live in Kutupalong.

Photo: Steven Corliss, the UN Refugee Agency's Representative in Bangladesh, via Twitter.

She will conclude her first visit to Bangladesh with official meetings with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen in Dhaka.

Jolie will also meet other senior officials in the capital to discuss how UNHCR can best support the current response led by the Bangladeshi government and with the need for safe and sustainable solutions to the plight of one of the world's most persecuted minorities.

She has spoken to displaced Rohingya people during a visit to Myanmar in July 2015 and to India in 2006.

Bangladesh has been heavily affected by the influx of more than 730,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar since August 2017 and now hosts nearly a million refugees from the persecuted minority.