Press Release:

UNHCR report: Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children, facing deadlier journeys in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, revealed today that 2020 was the deadliest year on record for refugee journeys in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.

Over the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many States in Southeast Asia to tighten their borders, leading to the highest numbers of refugees stranded at sea since the region’s “boat crisis” in 2015.

UNHCR’s new report, titled “Left Adrift at Sea: Dangerous Journeys of Refugees Across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea”, also highlights that some two-thirds of those attempting these perilous voyages are women and children.

These deadly journeys are not a new phenomenon. Over the past decade, thousands of Rohingya refugees have left by sea from Rakhine State in Myanmar and from the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The roots of these dangerous journeys are found in Myanmar, where the Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship and denied basic rights.

For the Rohingya who found refuge in neighbouring countries, restrictions on movement, livelihoods and education are compelling factors to seek a future elsewhere in the region. Motivations are various, often overlapping, and also include aspirations of reuniting with family members.

The risks have increased markedly for those attempting the journey. Of the 2,413 who are known to have travelled in 2020, 218 died or went missing at sea. This means that journeys were 8 times deadlier in 2020 than those in 2019.

In contrast to earlier periods where most of those travelling were men, the majority of passengers are now women and children. They are at even greater risk of abuse by smugglers when making such journeys. Their ordeal was made worse because safe harbours to end their dangerous journey were nowhere to be found.

Since 2020, many refugees have been marooned for months on unseaworthy boats, falling prey to abuses by smugglers, becoming gravely ill through insufficient food and water, and enduring the harsh conditions at sea, including both searing heat as well as treacherous waves and storms. These risks have been prolonged on the occasions where States have ‘pushed back’ boats to prevent disembarkation.

UNHCR is accordingly calling on all States in the region to search for and rescue refugees in distress at sea, and disembark them to a place of safety; work towards a regional mechanism for predictable and equitable disembarkation; provide access to asylum procedures for those who disembark; work with UNHCR and support fellow countries in the region to implement dignified reception arrangements and provide protection and assistance to refugees who disembark; and address the root causes of refugee maritime movements, including expanding access to safe legal pathways.

In his Foreword to the report, Indrika Ratwatte, UNHCR’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, emphasized the need to act: “For as long as States bordering the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal are reluctant to rescue and land those in distress at sea, that collective failure to act will have tragic and fatal consequences. We can and must do better.”

Bangkok, 19 August 2021

Md.Max

UN WOMEN launched a 3 day workshop on Gender Response Journalism at a star hotel with more than 30 journalists, reporters from print and electronics media in Cox’s Bazar.

The workshop aims at improving the skills of journalists on gender sensitivity , gender equality and to aware the concern over the rights and the dignity of the women, transgender and other neglected ones from the Society.

The journalists who took part in this unique event ended up learning many new ethically applied basic and ground roles in report writing on gender discrimination, gender ethics, where they also came to know with experience sharing taht, how misleading news might bring the dire consequences that turn the victims into accused one.

Sesssion after session , the workshop played an important role to shape the designs of reporting and with the latest comparison what is happening around the world in this covid 19 situations brought a complete new chapter in this genre.

The facilitator Mr.Mainul Islam Khan and his copartner Mafia Mukta lead the sessions with tremendous passion .

The media manager from UN WOMEN Mr.Mahmudul Islam organised the event and paved the way to make it a succesful workshop.

Nadira Islam from the UN WOMEN continued her gender equality session with an inspiration .

The sessions were also taken by 2 of overseas guest speakers who gave a complete ideas on Gender responsibilities where they replied the questions to the participants with new ideas and formulas.

The closing ceremony brought the president of Cox’s Bazar Journalists Association Abu Taher (special guest), the additional secretary of RRRC Shamsuduzza Noyon (chief guest) and the UN WOMEN country director Flora Machula who encouraged the reporters with new trainings on humanitarian principles .

The workshop ends with the distribution of the certificates among the participants .

Press release :

With COVID-19 raging in many parts of the world, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is warning about shortages of vaccines in the Asia-Pacific region, including for refugees and asylum-seekers.

We urge immediate and stronger support for the COVAX initiative, a worldwide effort aimed at achieving equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. This is critical to save lives and curb the impact of the virus, particularly in developing nations. These countries host the vast majority of more than 80 million forcibly displaced people in the world. Yet so far, they have benefited from only a fraction of the world’s COVID-19 vaccines.

UNHCR stresses that no one can be left behind in the global effort against the coronavirus. The pandemic will be defeated only when vaccinations become available everywhere on an equitable basis.

We are particularly worried about the situation in the Asia and Pacific region, which in the past two months has experienced the largest increase in the number of cases globally. Over this period, there have been some 38 million recorded COVID-19 cases and more than half a million deaths.

The fragile health systems in many countries in this region have struggled to cope with this recent surge. The lack of hospital beds, oxygen supplies, limited intensive care unit (ICU) capacities and scarce health facilities and services have worsened outcomes for those infected with COVID-19, particularly in India and Nepal. The highly infectious variant of the virus which first emerged in India threatens to rapidly spread in the sub-region, including among refugee populations.

Refugees remain especially vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19. Overcrowded settings, coupled with limited water and sanitation facilities, can contribute to increased infection rates and an exponential spread of the virus.

In Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where almost 900,000 Rohingya refugees are living in the single largest and most densely populated cluster of refugee camps in the world, the number of cases has increased considerably in the last two months. As of 31 May, there have been over 1,188 cases confirmed among the refugee population, with more than half of these cases recorded in May alone.

We have also seen a worrying increase in the number of COVID-19 cases among refugees and asylum-seekers in Nepal, Iran, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. While efforts are underway to mitigate the spread of the virus, these preventive measures need to be complemented with intensified vaccinations.

Some refugees, including in Nepal, have already received their first vaccine dose with COVAX-provided supplies. Among the Rohingya refugees in the camps in Bangladesh, not a single vaccine has been administered yet given the scarcity of supplies in the country.

The current delays in vaccine shipments, brought about by limited supplies to COVAX, mean that some of the world’s most vulnerable people remain susceptible to the virus.

UNHCR is adding its voice to the calls for countries with surplus doses to donate to COVAX, and for manufacturers to boost supplies to the COVAX facility.

UNHCR’s total financial requirements for COVID include $455m in supplementary needs and $469m in COVID-related activities that are included in its regular budget. To date, including projected contributions, UNHCR has received $252.8m or 27% of these requirements.

Geneva/ Guwahati, 24 April 2021: India is fast losing workingjournalists to Covid-19 and crosses 100 mark till date where the global tally hits 1175 scribes in 76 countries. The country lately starts losing three journalists every day. Brazil continues to be the worst affected country with 181 media corona-casualties followed by Peru (140) and Mexico (106), stated the Switzerland based media rights & safety body Press Emblem Campaign (PEC).

India, which witnessed the death of nine journalists due to novel corona virus infection aggravated ailments in the last three days, is just behind of Mexico with 101 casualties since the pandemic broke out in March 2020. The nation with a billion plus populace comes far ahead of Italy (52 dead), Bangladesh (51), USA (47), Colombia (47), Ecuador (46), United Kingdom (28), Dominican Republic (27), Pakistan (25), Turkey (22), Iran (21), etc.

Expressing apprehensions that the situation may worsen for the safety of journalists on the ground due to the corona-pandemic, Blaise Lempen, general secretary of PEC (www.pressemblem.ch/pec-news.shtml), advocates for adequate compensations to the victim families. He also emphasizes on early vaccinations to media workers so that they can
perform their duties as corona warriors after the doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, etc without endangering their lives.
Even after the launch of a massive corona-vaccination program covering around 13 million Indian citizens India till now in the backdrop of around three million reported infections every day mounting its cumulative Covid-19 cases to over 16 million (total casualty crosses 190,000).

Reported names of recent corona-victims include Shailesh Raval (Gujarat), Sopan Bongane, Ashok Tupe, Motichand Bedmutha (Maharashtra), P Tataiah, Chandrashekar Naidu, Srinivasa Rao (Andhra Pradesh), Ashish Yechury, Chanchal Pal Chauhan (New Delhi), Chinta Naga Raju, Ramachandra Rao (Telangana), Govind Behera, Manoj Kumar Sahu, Karunakar Sahu, Naresh Behera (Odisha), Jodu Chutia (Assam), etc.

“India has the probability to increase the number of media corona-victims as a number of States went on under-reporting about the actual figures because of various reasons,” commented PEC’s country representative Nava Thakuria adding, in many cases even the established media houses had not reported about their own corona-positive cases to avoid unwanted interferences from the authority under the health protocols.