Dhaka: Bangladesh says it is planning to build separate shelters for 6,000 Rohingya Muslim children who entered the country without parents to escape violence in neighboring Myanmar.
Junior minister Nuruzzaman Ahmed said today the social welfare ministry has asked local authorities for 200 acres (80 hectares) of land to build facilities for the children, and about 1,580 children have already been registered.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF has identified about 1,800 children who fled Myanmar without parents after violence broke out on Aug. 25, but Ahmed said the total number of such children is about 6,000.
Children make up about 60 per cent of the more than 420,000 Rohingya Muslims who have poured into Bangladesh over the last four weeks to flee persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
