Rohingya crisis: 22 per cent lost both parents [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

Rohingya crisis: 22 per cent lost both parents

Local November 13, 2017

Twenty-two per cent of Rohingya orphans have lost both of their parents and are now struggling to survive with the humanitarian assistance they are getting at Cox’s Bazar shelter centres.
In absence of both the parents, many of these children have to take care of their siblings while they themselves like other Rohingya children are suffering from malnutrition and the trauma of witnessing murder of and violence against their near and dear ones, aid workers have said.
Unaccompanied orphans are the worst suffers, said social service department workers collecting information about these helpless children.
‘We have found 36,000 Rohingyas orphan children who have lost their parents, mother or father or lost contact with them in our primary counting,’ Department of Social Services additional director Seyda Ferdous Akter, told New Age on Sunday.
‘We will prepare a full database of these children and finalise it as soon as possible,’ she added.
‘Till November 7, we have made a primary database of about 26000 children and found 22 per cent of them without both father and mother,’ said Seyda Ferdous Akter, who is supervising the counting.
The department officials said that they would keep in separate camps all Rohingya children who lost both their parents or did not have contact with them.
For others living either with mother or other relative, the department would provide separate assistance.
‘We are working to build separate camps for the orphans,’ Ferdous Akter said.
According to the UN estimation till Sunday, 6,15,000 Rohingyas entered Bangladesh since the beginning of the new influx, what the United Nations called the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency, on August 25.
A government handout on Saturday, however, said that till the day 6,27,000 Rohingyas entered Bangladesh.
Officials estimated that the new influx already took to 10.34 lakh the number of documented and undocumented Myanmar nationals in Bangladesh entering the country at times since 1978.
The new influx began after Myanmar security forces responded to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s reported attacks on August 25 by launching violence what the United Nations denounced as ethnic cleansing.
Terrified, half-starved and exhausted, Rohingyas have continued arriving in Bangladesh in groups trekking hills and forests and crossing rough sea and the Naf on boat and taking shelter wherever they could in Cox’s Bazar.
UNICEF estimated that about 60 per cent of the new arrivals Rohingyas were children.
The Department of Social Service on September 20 started listing orphan Rohingya children refugees and state minister for social welfare Nuruzzaman Ahmed at a press conference in Dhaka on September 26 said that they had estimated about 6,000 such Rohingya children.
Many of the newly arrived Rohingya children are traumatised. Memories of witnessing killing of and arson attack on their near and dear ones and experience of trekking through hills, forests and muddy roads and crossing rough sea by wooden boats while fleeing Myanmar are putting huge mental pressure on them and their mental growth would certainly be hampered, said people working with UNICEF and Save the Children.
The Rohingya children orphaned or separated from the parents are deprived of major source of a child’s emotional and physical security.
UNICEF said that aid groups have so far found at least 2,462 unaccompanied Rohingya children separated from both parents and relatives.
One of UNICEF Bangladesh spokesperson AM Sakil Faizullah told New Age that many of these children were traumatised, which would hamper their mental growth.
‘Besides other refugee conditions, these children are also are exposed to violence, abuse and trafficking,’ he added.
He said that these children without parents are also struggling to get humanitarian assistances.
‘UNICEF has found about 1,000 families headed by children,’ he informed.
‘Imagine a 14- or 15-year-old child taking care of his or her younger siblings like parents. What a difficult situation they are in!’ he said.
The government’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner office, with the support of UNHCR, found 3.9 per cent child heading households among 137,207 total households counted till in November 8.