Rohingya: 500,000 Unlikely to Receive Schooling in 2018

Rasa - A humanitarian organisation warned of a "lost generation" with more than 500,000 Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh unlikely to receive schooling in 2018.

News ID: 435462

Date: 25 December 2017 - 00:47

RNA - The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said unless interventions are "urgently funded", the humanitarian needs of children will only increase, Al-Jazeera reported.

"Education in emergencies is a life-saving and life-changing intervention - helping children recover and cope with the continuing adversity they face," Sarah Smith, the IRC's senior director for education, said.

"This is incredibly urgent for Rohingya children; no one is paying attention to their needs, and they face some of the highest levels of trauma the IRC has ever seen. Until children's rights to education in the Rohingya crisis are realised, we face the threat of a lost generation of what is already one of the world's most vulnerable populations," Smith added.

Less than two percent of humanitarian funding goes towards education, the most underfunded sector in response to the Rohingya plight, the IRC reported.

Evan Schuurman, part of the Save the Children's emergency response team in Cox's Bazar, announced in October that schooling was particularly important for traumatised refugee children.

"School isn't just about learning," he wrote, adding that "It provides routine and a sense of normality, a place where children can make friends, play and remember what it's like to be children.

"It's also a critical form of protection from exploitation and abuse, such as trafficking," he added.

More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since late August in fear of abuses by Myanmarese soldiers, which the United States and UN described as "ethnic cleansing".

The ongoing crisis has been described as the biggest forced exodus of 2017.

Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a deal last month for the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees, but little is known of its details.

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