Bangladesh for repatriation of Myanmar refugees

Bangladesh for repatriation of Myanmar refugees: Dipu Moni About 28000 registered refugees living in two camps and nearly 400000 unregistered refugees living outside the camps.

Raymond Hall, regional representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called on Foreign Minister Dr. Dipu Moni at the Foreign Ministry Sunday when they discussed early repatriation of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.(UNB, Dhaka)

During the meeting, Dipu Moni mentioned Myanmar is an immediate neighboring country and politically of high importance for Bangladesh. She said Bangladesh has economic and commercial cooperation with Myanmar.

The Foreign Minister thanked the UNHCR representative for their support to Bangladesh regarding the Myanmar refugees living in Bangladesh. She mentioned that about 28000 registered refugees living in two camps and nearly 400000 unregistered refugees living outside the camps are a heavy burden on Bangladesh economically, socially environmentally and also in terms of law and order.

Despite the country's severe resource constraints Bangladesh has so far done a good job in providing basic needs to the Myanmar refugees for the last three decades.

Dipu Moni told Hall that the continuous flow of illegal entrants were causing huge damage to the country's scarce land, forest and other resources. Deterioration of law and order situation has also been a major concern in Cox's Bazar district due to illegal activates carried out by these illegal entrants from Myanmar.

She said there had been some positive progress with regard to repatriation of the remaining Myanmar refugees especially after the Foreign Minister's visit to Myanmar.

Dipu Moni hopes that as a follow up to that progress the repatriation of the rest of the refugees would be aliened amicably .She expressed the hope that the authorities in Myanmar would soon resume repatriation of their citizens ending their miseries of living away from home.

Both Dipu Moni and Hall agreed that it is necessary to create favorable condition within Myanmar for repatriation of the refugees. She mentioned that some of the refugees repatriated on earlier occasions had sneaked back into Bangladesh.

She said Bangladesh wants to finalize the repatriation of the remaining Myanmar refugees to their homeland as soon as possible, and sought UNHCR assistance in this regard.