WASHINGTON – The United States has earmarked an additional US$180 million (RM754 million) to aid more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, said State Department spokesman Ned Price.
“With this new funding, our total humanitarian assistance for this response reaches more than US$1.5 billion since August 2017, when more than 740,000 Rohingya were forced to flee ethnic cleansing and other horrific atrocities and abuses in Burma’s (Myanmar’s) Rakhine state to safety in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh,” Sputnik reported, quoting Price in a press release yesterday.
The total includes more than US$1.2 billion for programmes that allow US humanitarian partners to provide life-saving assistance to the nearly 900,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
It also provides support to more than 472,000 affected members of the local host community in Bangladesh, said the release.
US aid covers multiple realms, including education, food security, health, nutrition, protection, shelter, disaster response, water, sanitation and hygiene, it added.
A 2017 offensive by Myanmar’s military and affiliated militias forced more than 700,000 mainly Muslim Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.
Price said many of those who led a military coup in Myanmar in February are the same individuals responsible for the atrocities against the Rohingya, as well as atrocities and other human rights abuses against members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.
The release included a US demand that Myanmar allows unfettered access to the Rohingya and other ethnic groups that are displaced inside the country. – Bernama, September 23, 2021
