The United States government is adding $69 million in aid to Rohingya refugees and other vulnerable populations impacted by the ongoing crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh, the State Department announced March 8.
“Since August 2017, the United States has provided nearly $2.1 billion in critical humanitarian assistance to those affected by the Rakhine State and Rohingya crisis. Today, we announced nearly $26 million in additional humanitarian assistance for those affected,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a tweet on March 8.
The aid will provide food, shelter, healthcare, and other critical services to refugees in Bangladesh and vulnerable communities in Myanmar, the DOS announcement reported.
Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority group who have lived in Myanmar for centuries but are not recognized as an official ethnic group and have been denied citizenship since 1982, the U.N. Refugee Agency reported in 2022. They have suffered "violence, discrimination, and persecution in Myanmar," the report states.
The largest exodus of Rohingya from Myanmar began in August 2017 after a massive wave of violence, according to the Refugee Agency report. More than 700,000 Rohingya people have sought refuge in Bangladesh, with approximately 980,000 refugees and asylum-seekers from Myanmar in neighboring countries. Rohingya refugees live in some of the largest and most densely populated camps in the world, most settling in the Kutupalong and Nayapara refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar region, the Refugee Agency reports.
The Rohingya from Myanmar is the world's largest stateless population, according to a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) report. Myanmar's government introduced a citizenship law in 1974, which stripped the Rohingya of access to full citizenship. The "white cards" that the junta issued to many Muslims in the 1990s only conferred limited rights and were not recognized as proof of citizenship.
In 2014, the Myanmar government decided Rohingya could only register if they identified as Bengali instead of Rohingya. The CFR cites a report by the advocacy group Fortify Rights stating the government has also forced Rohingya to carry national verification cards that effectively identify them as foreigners and do not grant them citizenship.
Myanmar officials claim the cards are a first move toward citizenship, the CFR reports. Critics insist the cards "deny Rohingya their identity and could make it easier for the government to further repress their rights," according to the CFR.
