Response plan for Rohingya needs urgent funding: Schraner

UN secretary-general's special representative for Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener has said that the newly-launched response plan for the Rohingya crisis needs urgent funding.

On Thursday, Christine Schraner said the Security Council that the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are living in extremely challenging conditions in Cox's Bazar of southeastern Bangladesh, UN News reported.

"While Bangladesh and host communities have been very generous, we cannot expect this to continue indefinitely," the envoy said, stressing the 2019 Joint Response Plan for Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis, which benefits both refugees and host communities, needs urgent funding.

UN figures showed that more than 745,000 Rohingya have fled from Myanmar's Rakhine State to Bangladesh since August 2017, escaping violence in Myanmar and joining roughly 200,000 others already displaced in the Cox's Bazar area by previous cycles of violence.

In mid-February, various UN agencies and their partner NGOs launched the joint response plan, aiming to raise 920 million US dollars to help more than 1.2 million people.

On the Rohingya refugees' return, the envoy expressed concern that heavy fighting with the ethnic militant group Arakan Army will further impact efforts toward their "dignified, voluntary and safe return."

She noted the presence of the United Nations and its partners at their places of return will be a positive incentive for them to go back.