Bangladesh plans to relocate 20,000 Rohingya refugees to US annually
Bangladesh is trying to send 20,000 Rohingya refugees to the United States a year as part of a third-country resettlement plan, according to Bangladesh Foreign Advisor Touhid Hossain.
'Although the number is small, it offers hope that the US might eventually accept 20,000 refugees annually, potentially totaling 200,000 over a decade. If this target is feasible, we should pursue it,' Hossain said on Monday, discussing the resettlement process for these displaced Myanmar nationals.
Currently, the program is in its early stages, with a few hundred refugees being relocated at a time. So far, around 2,500 have been selected for resettlement, and efforts to expedite the process are ongoing, he added.
The Rohingya crisis began on August 25, 2017, when refugees fled Myanmar's Rakhine State to escape persecution and genocide at the hands of Myanmar's military. Over the following months, 750,000 Rohingya sought refuge in Bangladesh’s Ukhiya-Teknaf region in Cox's Bazar, where an additional 400,000 were already living in camps.
Under international pressure, Myanmar's government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, agreed to repatriate the Rohingya by the end of 2017 and signed a bilateral agreement with Bangladesh in September of that year. However, attempts at repatriation in 2019 failed as the Rohingya, citing distrust in the Myanmar government, refused to return.
The COVID-19 pandemic further shifted global attention away from the crisis. Now, with ongoing civil war in Myanmar, repatriation efforts have stalled and concerns about new refugee inflows from Rakhine due to the conflict have resurfaced.
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