Foreign Affairs Adviser Md Touhid Hossain on Monday said there is still a hope that the United States will take around 2 lakh Rohingyas as part of a third country resettlement plan with 20,000 Rohingyas per year.
“It is a very small number. The number is 2 lakh. We can try that. It is still at a trial stage. Around 200-400 are going while the total number is so far 2500,” he told reporters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus on Sunday underscored the need for expediting third country resettlement of the Rohingya people who have been living in Bangladesh.
The chief adviser made the call after he met officials of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) at his office in Dhaka.
The IOM chief of mission in Bangladesh Abdusattor Esoev gave an overview of the resettlement of the Rohingya to developed countries including in the United States.
Washington DC has reaffirmed its commitment to resettle thousands of Rohingyas in the United States, but the process hasn't been accelerated. The chief adviser asked the officials to fast-track the process.
"It should be the easiest of the process," he told the officials of IOM and the Bangladesh government.
The IOM Bangladesh chief said the resettlement of the Rohingya resumed in 2022 after a gap of 12 years, but only this year the process gathered some pace.
Responding to a question on Rohingya repatriation, the foreign affairs adviser said he personally believes that repatriation of the Rohingyas is not possible at this moment. “It could be possible to start if a kind of stability is restored there (Myanmar).”
He said Bangladesh needs the international community’s support so that the Rohingyas can return to their place of origin safely.
Earlier, he said the government would prevent any fresh entry of the Rohingyas, noting that around 8,000 Rohingyas recently entered Bangladesh, fleeing armed conflict in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Earlier, interim government Chief Adviser Prof Yunus sought United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi’s support for the “dignified and voluntary” return of more than one million Rohingya people, who live in camps in Bangladesh, to their homeland in Myanmar.
High Commissioner Grandi had a conversation with Chief Adviser Prof Yunus over the phone on Monday to congratulate him on his assumption of the leadership of the interim government of Bangladesh.
The UNHCR chief requested the chief adviser to attend a meeting on the Rohingya crisis on the sidelines of the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in New York.
Grandi informed the chief adviser that he plans to visit Bangladesh in October this year.
Seven years ago, on 25 August 2017, some 700,000 Rohingya men, women and children were forced to flee Myanmar and seek protection in Bangladesh.