The UN has condemned Myanmar’s refusal to grant it access to Rakhine state – the scene of the alleged ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.
“The access we have in northern Rakhine state is unacceptable,” Mark Lowcock, the head of the UN’s humanitarian office, said in Geneva, Switzerland, this week.
He added that he believed a “high-level” UN team would be able to visit the region in “the next few days”.
More than 500 000 Rohingya people have crossed Myanmar’s border into Bangladesh, making this the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency.
“This flow out of Myanmar has not stopped yet; it is into the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya [who are] still in Myanmar,” said Lowcock.
“We want to be ready in case there is a further exodus.”
As part of its appeal for $430m (R5.9bn) to provide aid for those displaced, the UN earlier this week warned of the immense pressure to accommodate refugees who have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh.
“People arrive fearful, exhausted and hungry, and in desperate need of immediate help – including for shelter, food, clean water, sanitation and healthcare,” Lowcock and Anthony Lake, the executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, said.
“They bring with them terrible accounts of what they have seen and suffered – stories of children being killed, women brutalised and villages burnt to the ground.”
This week, Bangladesh announced it would build one of the world’s biggest refugee camps for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who had sought asylum in the country.
