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Myanmar: International community failed Rohingyas, UN Special Rapporteur

More than 800 children have been killed or maimed since the coup began in February 2021 and end of last year and most were victims of indiscriminate attacks by junta forces, the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Thomas Andrews, said on Thursday.

Speaking at a press conference in Geneva, the UN-appointed independent expert said that in addition to those killed, "387 children are behind bars in Myanmar as political prisoners...660,000 children are now displaced in Myanmar and 5.8 million children require humanitarian assistance. This is a disaster on top of a disaster, and it has the most profound impact on those that are most vulnerable and that is the children of Myanmar.”

In a recently report, the Special Rapporteur detailed how the junta had imported more than $1 billion in weapons and weapons-related materials since the military coup, with the full knowledge that these weapons could be used to kill thousands of innocent people, to commit probable war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“I published just a few weeks ago a comprehensive report called ‘The Billion Dollar Death Trade’ in which we identify very specifically where those weapons are coming from, the jurisdictions of those weapons,” Mr. Andrews said. “We identified manufacturers of those weapons and there was some very detailed information that we forwarded to some countries, who have expressed an interest in enforcement action, so that we can try to stop the flow of these weapons to the junta.”

If the shipment of these materials is stopped, the junta’s capacity to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity would be significantly disrupted, said Mr. Andrews.

Earlier, the Special Rapporteur told the Human Rights Council’s 47 UN Member States that they must step up and stop so that the junta cannot continue “Myanmar's nightmare”. He called on the international community to act in a coordinated manner to deprive the junta, stressing that there needs to be coordination and strategy behind sanctions and coordinated enforcement of these sanctions.

“The United States has put sanctions on the Myanmar foreign trade bank and the Myanmar investment commercial bank. Those are huge steps forward,” Mr. Andrews said. “If the United States would follow the EU’s lead in imposing sanctions on the single largest source of revenue for the junta, Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), and then if the EU followed the United States in imposing sanctions on financial institutions, we would have really something going here.”

Giving a sobering update on the deteriorating conditions in Myanmar, Mr. Andrews reported that “kids, Rohingya children, cannot eat resolutions and they are starving and we need more than rhetoric and words. We need action. And I was very concerned when I learned that last year only one of the 57 OIC countries had contributed any money to the Rohingya emergency joint response plan.”

Mr. Andrews asked the Council whether the international community was meeting its fundamental obligation to help the victims of these human rights violations and atrocities.

“The victims of these atrocities, and there is no group that has been more victimized by the horror of the Myanmar military than the Rohingya ethnic muslim minority,” the Special Rapporteur said. “Over 700,000 literally had to run for their lives over the border into Bangladesh, in 2016 and 2017, because of the genocidal attacks of the military.”

Today, Rohingya people who fled Myanmar continue to live in refugee camps in Bangladesh. But, because of a lack of support from the international community, Rohingya children are being denied the food and nutrition that they need. A full 41 per cent of Rohingya children suffer from stunted growth and more than half are anaemic. In addition, the UN World Food Programme was forced to cut already meager food rations by 17 per cent in April and an additional 20 per cent in June.

“More than one million Rohingyas are in Bangladesh now and they are living under extremely difficult conditions,” Mr. Andrews concluded. “Now the tragedy here is that the international community has failed to provide the level of support that is necessary to sustain these Rohingya.”

UN Special Rapporteurs are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.

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HRC 53 - Press Conference: SR on Myanmar - 06 July 2023

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