Vatican Minister Cardinal Michael Felix Czerny has said that it is a real shame that the international community has not been able to provide a solution to the Rohingya crisis.

“The situation for the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar is very challenging. The reality in the camp is that they are stateless, permanently unemployed and being shut in as they are in the camp. This is a situation which might be tolerable for a month, but it has been going on for years,” he said at a press conference at the CBCB Centre on Tuesday.

Cardinal Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery of Integral Development, who has been on a visit to Bangladesh from November 1-5, interacted with the Rohingya camp in Cox’s Bazar, internal migrants in Narayanganj, street children in Mohammadpur in Dhaka and the Christian leaders.

Asked on the role of the Catholic Church in addressing the challenges of climate change, he said the Vatican will seek to speak up in the upcoming climate conference in Brazil on behalf of Bangladesh and other countries who are the innocent victims of the choices, policies, and lifestyles of other countries.

“This is international injustice which is similar to the injustices we have seen here inside the country,” the Cardinal said.
He said many people moving within the country from one place to another looking for work and facing great difficulties with housing and schooling, which is also a big challenge.

“They are attracted by the jobs in the industries, but the ordinary services they should have are very difficult to organize and to provide. Therefore, in some ways, they live as strangers in their own land,” Cardinal Czerny said.

He said such migrants do not really belong where they have come, and they cannot go back to where they came from.

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“So again, we have great sympathy, and I very much admire what the church is able to do to accompany them, to help them seek their rights, and to find solutions to their problems.”

He said the Rohingya are living in the camps in a very difficult condition after having been driven out of their own home, their traditional home and their ancestral home.

“We should be grateful [to Bangladesh] for the welcome that they have received and also hope that their conditions will improve, and most of all, hope that there will be a solution soon so that they can return to their homeland,” Cardinal Czerny said.