{"id":11817,"date":"2017-11-22T17:33:35","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T17:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=11817"},"modified":"2017-11-22T17:33:35","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T17:33:35","slug":"rohingya-refugees-drained-by-trauma-says-u-n-refugee-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/rohingya-refugees-drained-by-trauma-says-u-n-refugee-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Rohingya refugees “drained” by trauma, says U.N. refugee chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh from violence in Myanmar have been “drained” by the trauma they suffered during the crisis and a struggle to overcome desperate want, the United Nations refugee chief said on Wednesday.<\/h2>\n
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REUTERS–\u00a0 \u00a0More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar since late August this year for neighbouring Bangladesh, driven out by a military clearance operation in Rakhine State.<\/p>\n

The refugees’ suffering has caused an international outcry, spurring appeals by aid agencies for millions of dollars in funds to tackle the crisis.<\/p>\n

“I found this was a population that had almost no response. Very passive,” said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, describing his visit late in September to camps where the refugees were staying.<\/p>\n

“You almost felt there was nothing left and that everything had been drained by this,” he told Reuters in an interview in his first visit to the South Korean capital.<\/p>\n

He saw the lassitude as a symptom of trauma, he added.<\/p>\n

“We haven’t seen this kind of trauma for a very long, long time,” the Italian diplomat said. “Maybe I saw it in the ’90s in central Africa.”<\/p>\n

Grandi coordinated UN humanitarian activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo during its 1996-97 civil war.<\/p>\n

The success of aid efforts by the United Nations and non-government bodies depends on the Myanmar government to defuse the hostility facing humanitarian workers in Rakhine, Grandi said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not political work, it’s not to favour one community over the other,” he said.<\/p>\n

“On the contrary, it’s directed to all those who are in need. And when members of the Buddhist community are in need, they certainly qualify for that. I think it’s important that they stress that, they do that more,” said Grandi.<\/p>\n

Tension had been rising between the government and aid agencies even before the spasm of violence that began in late August.<\/p>\n

Officials had accused the World Food Programme of aiding insurgents after high-energy biscuits were discovered in July at a forest encampment the authorities said belonged to a militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh from violence in Myanmar have been “drained” by the trauma they suffered during the crisis and a struggle to overcome desperate want, the United Nations refugee chief said on Wednesday. REUTERS–\u00a0 \u00a0More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar since late August this year for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news-and-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11819,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11817\/revisions\/11819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}