From the op-ed:
Half a world away, thousands of people are uprooting their lives from the country they called home, and putting everything at stake to flee. As Myanmar’s regime continues to perpetrate horrific acts of violence against the Rohingya community — acts that a U.N. official called a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing” — half a million civilians have already fled. It’s the swiftest outflow of refugees since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. On September 28, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said that the horrific campaign of violence has "spiraled into the world's fastest-developing refugee emergency, a humanitarian and human rights nightmare."
Bangladesh is now home to over 809,000 Rohingya refugees, creating a situation the country’s government officials describe as “untenable.” This inflow of refugees puts a strain on a country that already ranks among the poorest 50 countries in the world. And many Rohingya are fleeing to one of Bangladesh’s poorest districts.
As world leaders meet in Washington, D.C., this week at the World Bank Annual Meetings and G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors, they must come together to call on Bangladesh to offer a safe haven to Rohingya refugees. But Bangladesh can’t be expected to take on this burden alone.
Here are three ways the international community should support Bangladesh as it grapples with this crisis.
Read full op-ed here.
