Arakan News Agency
The Swiss Solidarity charity managed to raise over CHF3 million ($3 million) during a one-day national fundraising campaign on Wednesday to support the 780,000 Rohingya people living in Bangladesh refugee camps.
The money collected by the fundraising arm of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (the parent company of swissinfo.ch) will be used to provide emergency aid to the refugees once the monsoon season starts.
With the onset of heavy rainfalls in Bangladesh, there will be serious difficulties in supplying about 220,000 refugees with food, water, medicine and shelter, according to a study by the University of Dhaka. The study estimates that some 24,000 lives will be threatened, and these people will need to be moved to the mainland.
“With numbers so high, it is important that Swiss Solidarity’s partner relief organizations carry out the necessary back-up measures, help to evacuate those most in danger and repair any damages as soon as possible”, the organisation wrote in a press release published on Wednesday.
Since August last year, over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled the western state of Arakan in Myanmar for Bangladesh as security forces carried out brutal crackdowns, following attacks by Rohingya insurgents.
The UN described the exodus as “one of the fastest growing refugee crises in the world”.
In March, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that he believes “acts of genocide” may have taken place against the Rohingya in the Rakhine region of Myanmar and that ethnic cleansing is still underway.
In 2017, a one-day fundraising appeal for victims of famine in Africa by Swiss Solidarity and partner organisations raised CHF8.76 million.
