Thousand of children are yet to be reunited with loved ones since Rohingyas fled Myanmar for refugee in Bangladesh
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There are fresh fears over the safety of Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar over the past two months.
Child traffickers are known to be roaming refugee camps in Bangladesh looking for easy prey as thousands of infants remain separated from their parents.
At the Kutupalong camp Noor Alom has set up a makeshift registration booth to help adults identify lost children.
I spoke to #Rohingya children and families who fled violence in #Myanmar and now need our help. This crisis is a children’s emergency. pic.twitter.com/g41lrmCmux
— Helle Thorning S (@HelleThorning_S) November 4, 2017
Some 1,800 children have already been reunited with their parents through the lost and found information centre. They are part of more than 600,00 Rohingya who have fled Myanmar in response to alleged killings, arson and rape by troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs.
Myanmar took his parents. Who is going to take care of him? Countless Rohingya children are now orphans and lost. https://t.co/Wh97wIksWt pic.twitter.com/YVlgmO5Yw4
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) November 5, 2017
But with children making up six out of ten of the new arrivals, the sprawling camps provide fertile hunting ground for traffickers.
“This is a major major risk at the moment that we enter in this kind of trafficking that could be domestic work for minor girls within the big cities,” said the Jean Lieby, head of child protection at the UN’s children’s agency, UNICEF.
The United Nations says trafficking networks are not the only danger facing young Rohingya. Many desperate parents are selling their children into bonded labour to pay off debts.