22, Mar 2018 | CJP Team

According to research group ACAPS, Myanmar leads the list of countries where aid organisations’ ability to reach those requiring assistance has declined in the last six months, the Thomson Reuters Foundation reported. ACAPS considered 37 countries using nine indicators, such as violence against aid workers and restrictions that bar people from getting aid. “Myanmar is the country where humanitarian access has deteriorated the most, as access for the Rohingya population has become increasingly difficult,” ACAPS said. According to the United Nations, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have escaped Myanmar for its neighbouring Bangladesh. The exodus came after militant attacks prompted a brutal military operation in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in late August 2017. While the country’s government had permitted some organisations to access the Maungdaw district in western Rakhine, it was “in a short-term and unpredictable manner,” according to Pierre Peron, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). “Most humanitarian organizations that had been working in Maungdaw District for years have still not been able to resume life-saving programmes for some of the most vulnerable people in the world,” Peron said via email. ACAPS also highlighted the deterioration of humanitarian access Pakistan, Libya, Ethiopia, and Turkey, among other countries.