30, Aug 2018

According to the United Nations, Rohingya refugee children who do not have access to proper education in refugee camps in Bangladesh are at risk of becoming a “lost generation,” the Thomson Reuters Foundation reported. A recent report from UNICEF said that the “lives and futures of more than 380,000 children in refugee camps in Bangladesh are in peril,” the Foundation reported. Moreover, several hundred thousand children also do not have access to aid, according to the UNICEF report. As per UNICEF spokesman Alastair Lawson-Tancred, Bangladesh bars refugees getting a formal education over concerns that the Rohingya refugees may become a “permanent fixture”. He told the Foundation that early on in the crisis, humanitarian groups established informal learning centres for children between three and 14, but older teenagers feel alienated and hopeless. “Unquestionably, there is a danger that we might be facing a lost generation,” Lawson-Tancred said, adding, “Sooner or later, you’re going to have large groups of disaffected youth on your hands.” According to a recent Save the Children study, one out of two Rohingya children who escaped to Bangladesh lost their parents to violence, and more than 6,000 children in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar are alone, or forced to manage on their own.