UNICEF warns over potential loss of generation of Rohingya children

REUTERS - More than half a million Muslim Rohingya children in refugee camps in Bangladesh still face immediate dangers including disease and floods, but also risk becoming a lost generation unless given a proper education, UNICEF said on Thursday (August 22). In a report marking one year since 700,000 Rohingyas fled a violent crackdown by Myanmar security forces in Rakhine state, the agency said it was stepping up investment in the long-term future of Rohingya youth. "We are talking about risking the loss or the potential loss of a generation of Rohingya children," Simon Ingram, spokesman of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), told a Geneva news briefing after spending six weeks in the camps in Cox's Bazar. The U.N. estimates that another 530,000 to 600,000 stateless Rohingyas remain in Rakhine state, including some 360,000 children, he said. The U.N. has limited access there.