The shortage of funds is hampering the humanitarian response to the needs of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, who took refuge in Bangladesh to escape from the atrocities of the Myanmar security forces and local Buddhist mobs in Rakhine, according to the United Nations. The global body urged the donors, who pledged funds in a pledging conference in Geneva on October 23, to make the money available as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh has said at the UN that the international community, including the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), is responsible to find out the perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas.

At a press briefing in Dhaka, foreign minister said that a Bangladesh-Myanmar joint working group will start working by November in order to repatriate the Rohingyas and that Bangladesh will finalise the names of its part of the group by a week.  “The UN Office for the Coordination

of Humanitarian Affairs says that the number of Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar and arrived in Bangladesh has reached 607,000,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary general, told a regular briefing in New York on Monday.

“More than half of these refugees are staying in the Kutupalong Expansion site, an area merging pre existing makeshift settlements and adjacent

land allocated by the Government of Bangladesh,” he said. Aid workers continue to provide food, shelter, water and health care, among other assistance, said the spokesperson. “Despite the substantial scaling up of the humanitarian response, enormous gaps remain, primarily due to the lack of land, the growing scale of needs, funding shortages and logistical constraints.  The revised appeal for this crisis is currently 31 per cent funded,” he said.

“The pledging conference last week raised $360 million, and donors are urged to disburse these funds as soon as possible,” he added. Ambassador Masud Bin Momen, Bangladesh permanent representative to the UN, said that the international community, including the UNSC, has a responsibility to determine as to who are responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims that has been described by the UN human rights chief as a ‘text book example of ethnic cleansing’.

While taking part in a discussion on the report of the international criminal court at the 72nd UN General Assembly on Monday, he also said that the atrocities in the Rakhine by the Myanmar security forces have enhanced the importance of the Rome statute of the ICC that deals with genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. The envoy referred to the statement of UN special adviser on prevention of genocide Adama Dieng, who said that the brutalities in Rakhine can be considered as genocide, crime against humanity and war crime.