Over 1,78,000 'Rohingya Children' at High Risk of Infantile-Mortality, Enslavement & Disabilities


Posted July 25, 2015 by prping

The International Community, UN and E.U.-U.S. Hierarchies Urged to Take a 'Moral Stand' amidst the Worsening Situation—SAIRI Post-doc Multiversity for the UN-MDGs Studies!

 
Myanmar, Asia, July 25, 2015 /PressReleasePing/ - The wording and diction of SAIRI's situation report on 'Rohingya Children Crisis' has well-knocked for humanitarian sentiments of the people around the globe. Quite meaningfully it has shaken the collective conscience of humanity by through the voicing: According to the U.N. data and the statistical annals of other dependable sources, Myanmar's ethnic minority 'Rohingya' constitutes some 1.3 million of the populace of the western Rakhine state of Burma. There they live in an extremely 'oppressed state' and are described by the UN and the global human rights watch-out sentinels as—"the most persecuted, beleaguered and oppressed community on the face of earth".

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on 'Human Rights in Myanmar', Yanghee Lee precisely summed-up what she saw last year during her 10-day visit to Rakhine state," The situation is deplorable..!",she stated.

And now, this 'beleaguered and oppressed' minority of 'deplorable condition', is passing through a perpetually worsening 'ongoing crisis' of its own nature.

"In the wake of the dreadful, harrowing outrages committed by riot groups in the Rakhine state, thousands of Rohingya children, are extremely prone to infantile mortality, whilst others highly vulnerable to physical and mental disabilities, as well as at starkly potential peril-menaces of enslavement", states the first situation report on the 'Rohingya Children Crisis' by SAIRI Post-doc Multiversity for the United Nations MDGs studies.

The Desolate State of Coercive Oppression:
A 'three-fringed state of detention' has been constituted by: 1) the state-managed detention in so-called custodial campsites; 2) the trafficker-run hostage camps; and 3) prison sites contrived and owned by smugglers. Tens of thousands of families have been restrained in this cramped, three-fringed state of confinement where, besides women and the elderly, it is the children who are especially vulnerable to enslavement, with undescribed numbers already having been sold on, notifies the report, which focuses on the children trapped in this emergency situation.

The Plea:
The testimonial document of SAIRI, now calls on the UN, interregional hierarchies and the global community to take a 'moral stand' by mounting an urgent response to address the most 'vulnerable hour' of this humanitarian emergency.

The Impeded Set-back:
Probing to the Actual State of Affairs and Concealment of Data-records:
As per the absence, or in certain instances the inaccessibility to non-figurative reliable census, no exact child population figures are available in case of Rohingyas.

It is estimated that well-over 1,78,000 children belong to the Rohingya minority.

Due to concealed data and obscured information, it is difficult to give precise extents of disease likelihoods and life-threatening odds otherwise, among the children exiled and expatriated at large.

It remains striking as well as surprising here that neither of the international rights groups, nor of the UN agencies including UNICEF, WHO or UNHCR seem to be in position to figure out the exact numbers of the children displaced or those detained in campsites and those at higher degrees of vulnerabilities involving severe health problems or even to certain extent, their existence too.

The only way remained left for an investigator is to integrate the inferential approximations and prognostication appraisals based upon the deductive-impost estimations and the cross-referential considerations.

However, by engaging with and employing the possible means, describes the report:
"After a careful analysis and thorough synthesis of the cross-referential data-statistics obtained from reliable sources, SAIRI's epidemiological experts find that, the children of these so-called refugees camps are having acute malnutrition rates well-crossing 30 % and hitting 35%, which is far beyond of 15%—the emergency level set by the World Health Organization".

"The European Community Humanitarian Office, even years ago reported that the area had acute malnutrition rates hitting 23 percent, which was still beyond that of the emergency level declared by WHO", relates further SAIRI report.
http://www.newindianexpress.com/world/Rohingya-Children-in-Myanmar-Camps-Going-Hungry/2014/08/08/article2370085.ece
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/rohingya-children-myanmar-camps-going-hungry

The Desperate Circumstances:
Rohingya people are effectively 'held confined' in a 'state of statelessness', and hence, are deprived of all kinds of basic civil rights including emergency medical relief, the necessary provisions of food and water, and other humanitarian aids. The situation escalates and surges to multiplicative factors when it comes to children, the labouring women or in case of disables.

UNICEF describes the situation of chronic and acute mal-nutrition in the Rakhine state, where the Rohingyas are largely inhabited.

Children living in Rakhine are more likely to suffer from chronic malnutrition, more likely to be malnourished than the average Myanmar child, with almost '50 per cent of children being stunted'.

They are less likely to attend primary school and less likely to access adequate water and sanitation facilities than children living in other parts of the Union. According to a survey undertaken in 2010, only 12 per cent of children are likely to be born in a health care facility, compared to the national average of 36 per cent.
http://www.unicef.org/eapro/media_22655.html

An estimated number of 13,000 to 20,000 children, are confined into the isolated squalid camps in Rakhine, where, they are sub-humanely dealt with like 'farm animals'.

Not only are people being denied access to public services but they are 'effectively' prevented from leaving the area to seek emergency medical aid, even in the case of women in labour, and children.

In an article describing the Ohn Taw Gyi camp outside Sittwe, wrote Esther Htusan from Japan, "Conditions in the camps, and elsewhere in Rakhine, went from bad to worse after the government expelled their main health lifeline, the Nobel-prize winning Doctors Without Borders. A month later, other humanitarian groups were temporarily evacuated after extremist stormed their residences and offices".

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/08/11/asia-pacific/social-issues-asia-pacific/rohingya-children-slowly-starving-myanmar-camps/#.Vauz6bXa2Zh
The food rations the pregnant and lactating women get in camps is very little, and sometimes they even don't get any at all.

"The first two years of a child's life, when the brain and body are developing, are critical for physical and mental development. Without adequate nutrition, little babies are prone to stunting, a condition that would be shaping the rest of their lives. As reaching adulthood, they are weaker, prone to illnesses and have limited cognitive capacity".

In these camps, the children can be seen everywhere with bloated eyes, tiny arms and legs, and with a face and skin that tightly clings to the bones.

The poor victimized women in the camps, after having lost their husbands, and seen their lives ruined, are desperate to save their children, marked further Htusan.

Quite interestingly as well as appallingly, in spite of all what is happening to the poor destitute children, Burma kept on insisting UNICEF officials to 'apologize' for using the word Rohingya during a UNICEF's official briefing in Rakhine, which 'they did' under duress.

Rupturing and abolishing of the 'Convention on the Rights of the Child' on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography holds lesser importance than the use of word 'Rohingya'!
http://www.unicef.org/eapro/media_22654.html

It remains also strangely worth noting here that many of the media correspondents and journalists, along with the rights groups' reporters, are forbidden from entering the victims' site.

In some incidents, numerous media correspondents and investigators have been forced to hand over their cameras and memory cards with a cautionary note that "they would not try to go to these sites again".

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Myanmar-detains-journalists-covering-boat-people-rescue/articleshow/47491836.cms?

Enormities and Extents of Enslavement:
Some 15,000 to 18,000 younger as well as older children have been resorting to fleeing off Myanmar through the Bay of Bengal in recent months. These flee-offs often take place on over-crowded rickety boats that end up adrift and stranded in the Andaman Sea. There are many recorded incidents of enslavement, with new research revealing the likelihood that tens of hundreds more children either prone to being enslaved or have already been sold as slaves, after having been held hostage and tortured in secret jungle precincts and at other hostage sites.

"The boys are sold for forced-labour and the girls into 'forced-prostitution' as sex slaves", endorse well-informed sources from in and out of the zone-areas.

The situation, reached the extents that, "The smuggling of Rohingya has become a significant industry along Thailand's Andaman coast. It's now said to be more profitable and less dangerous than selling drugs", asserted Alan Morison and Premkamon Ketsara, since in their reportage published in Phuketwan, Thailand, on the issue.


Press Contact:
SAIRI
SAIRI
Myanmar, Asia
http://www.unicef.org/eapro/media_22654.html
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Issued By SAIRI
Country Myanmar
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Last Updated July 25, 2015