A London-based rights group has called upon the world yesterday to reflect and respond to the ongoing human rights abuses in Myanmar.

"While we celebrate the anniversary of the U.N.'s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the achievements thereafter, we must also take a sober and honest look at the work that remains ahead," Kyaw Win, the executive director of Burma Human Rights Network, said in a statement.

Win said that human rights abuses in Myanmar have "drastically" increased over the past five years and the world has been slow to respond.

The Myanmar government has long been blamed for genocide against the minority Muslim Rohingya community in western Rakhine state. The huge exodus of Rohingya began in August last year after Myanmar security forces launched a brutal crackdown following attacks by an insurgent group on guard posts. The scale, organization and ferocity of the operation led to accusations from the international community, including the U.N., of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Rohingya Muslims are the most persecuted minority in the world according to U.N. figures and continue to suffer from oppression under the Myanmar government, the army and Buddhist extremists. Over the past decade, thousands of Rohingya have been killed since violence broke out in 2008, causing hundreds of thousands to flee their homeland for Bangladesh, Malaysia and other countries in the region.