A quarter of Rohingya children under the age of five who fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar suffer from potentially life-threatening levels of malnutrition, the United Nations said Friday.
The U.N. children's agency said that three health and nutrition surveys conducted between October 22 and November 27 showed up to 25 per cent of the young children crammed into Bangladeshi refugee camps have acute malnutrition, among other maladies.
"Nearly half the children surveyed have anaemia, up to 40 per cent have diarrhea, and up to 60 per cent have acute respiratory infections," UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac told reporters in Geneva.
More than 655,000 people from the Rohingya minority Muslim community have fled Myanmar's Rakhine state since late August during military operations that the UN has described as ethnic cleansing. Around half of them are children.
Bangladesh's UNICEF head Edouard Beigbeder said that "our worst fears have been confirmed".
"Refugee children who have already endured unimaginable suffering in fleeing their homes are now facing a public health crisis," Beigbeder said in a statement.
On Nov. 3, UNICEF warned that 7.5 percent of the children in one of the camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district were at risk of dying from acute malnutrition.
New surveys at the Kutupalong and Nayapara refugee camps, as well as other make-shift settlements, that included more than 1,700 children highlighted the worsening situation. "Less than 16 per cent of children are consuming a minimal acceptable diet," UNICEF said.
The U.N. rights chief called for a fresh international investigation into Myanmar's abuses against its Rohingya Muslim minority, warning of possible "elements of genocide." Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that none of the 626,000 Rohingya who have fled violence since August should be repatriated to Myanmar unless there was robust monitoring on the ground.
Zeid, who has described the campaign in the past as a "textbook case of ethnic cleansing", was addressing a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council called by Bangladesh, which is struggling to accommodate Rohingya who have fled. The United Nations defines genocide as acts intended to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. A U.N. convention requires all countries to act to halt genocide and to punish those responsible.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar has denied citizenship for the Rohingya since 1982 and excludes them from the 135 ethnic groups officially recognized, which effectively renders them stateless. They have long faced discrimination and persecution with many Buddhists in Myanmar calling them "Bengalis" and saying they migrated illegally from Bangladesh, even though they have lived in the country for generations.