UN urges citizenship for Myanmar Muslims

Rasa - The top UN envoy to Myanmar has emphasized on the urgency for the Muslim minority in the country's violence-ridden Rakhine state to get on the path to citizenship.

News ID: 845

Date: 03 May 2014 - 00:58

Rasa News Agency reports - The UN secretary general’s special adviser on Myanmar, Vijay Nambiar, warned on Thursday that the security of the Rohingya Muslims, who are considered illegal immigrants by the government, will remain threatened unless they get citizenship.

He made the remarks in an address before the International Peace Institute in New York, where he added that failure to grant citizenship to Myanmar’s Muslim minority “is sure to affect the international reputation of the country.”

Nambiar further stated that the status of Rakhine's Muslim population remains unaddressed despite many promises by government authorities for early action to provide temporary identity certificates, register new births, and allow the Rohingyas to move freely.

"The utmost necessity now for the Muslim community in Rakhine," he said, is to have their status verified and regularized, and to obtain a National Registration Card from the government and then citizenship which would enable the Rohingyas to travel throughout the country and get passports to go abroad.

Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist nation which only recently emerged from half-a-century of military rule over the country.

The government considers the Rohingya Muslims to be from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship and relevant rights.

Many Rohingya Muslims were born in Myanmar to families who migrated to the country generations ago.

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