An unprecedented 200,000 child refugees have fled Burma and are now in urgent need of help, Unicef has warned, as the Rohingya crisis reaches new proportions. Minors make up at least 60 per cent of the 330,000 Rohingya who have crossed the border to Bangladesh over the past few weeks. Highly traumatised, they are arriving malnourished and injured after walking for days, a spokesperson said.
Speaking to The Independent shortly after visiting the Burmese border, Unicef communications chief for south Asia Jean-Jacques Simon said it was hard to imagine what the "streams" of people crossing had witnessed. "It's reaching a new proportion every day... You have to wonder when it will stop," he said. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Burma to end the violence, which he called "ethnic cleansing." “Grievances that have been left to fester for decades have now escalated beyond Myanmar's [Burma's] borders, destabilising the region,” he warned. “The humanitarian situation is catastrophic.”
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