ZCZC
BSS–40
BANGLADESH-UN-HUMANITARIAN
Bangladesh calls for burden sharing in humanitarian situations
DHAKA, June 10, 2020 (BSS) – Bangladesh has called the international community in the United Nations to put utmost importance on principle of burden and responsibility sharing in their activities while addressing humanitarian situations.
“Emergency humanitarian responses such as pandemics and health emergencies must be underpinned by additional humanitarian assistance, without curtailing the funds for regular humanitarian needs”, said Bangladesh Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Rabab Fatima, according to a press release received here today from New York.
Fatima was speaking at the UN high-level panel discussion on “Addressing the increasing complexity of health challenges in humanitarian context” in the 2020 ECOSOC Humanitarian Affairs Segment (HAS) on Tuesday.
She underscored that the existing gaps in humanitarian assistance coordination must be addressed and all people including refugees and migrants and their host communities must have unhindered and free access to vaccines and treatments, without any additional burden to their host countries.
The Bangladesh Permanent Representative said all humanitarian programmes for preparedness, response and recovery, need to be inclusive for mental health and psychosocial support of all affected people.
She urged for special attention to the gender dimension and particular challenges faced by women, in such situations.
Mentioning that climate vulnerability can also create humanitarian emergencies as climate change has put millions of people facing vector-borne diseases, she underscored the importance of renewed climate actions.
Sharing Bangladesh’s experience, Fatima stated that Bangladesh’s hosting of the 1.1 million Rohingyas from Myanmar demonstrated its commitment to humanity and human rights.
She briefed the meeting about Bangladesh government taken efforts to reduce risk of transmission of COVID-19 in the Rohingya camps which include ensuring health hygiene and social distancing as well as setting up isolation centres keeping humanitarian operations unhindered.
She also mentioned that these measures have kept pandemic spread among the Rohingya population to a minimum, not anywhere close to the infection rate in the host community.
Fatima also mentioned that the Rohingyas had been included in Bangladesh’s national COVID response and recovery plans.
Morocco as the Vice President of the ECOSOC had chaired the ECOSOC HAS meeting while Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock moderated the discussion.
Earlier, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addressed the HAS and mentioned that health emergencies such as the COVID 19 pandemic could exacerbate any humanitarian crisis, and therefore, the refuges and other people in humanitarian situations were being given high priority in the UN’s Global Humanitarian Response Plan.
Netherlands foreign trade and development minister Sigrid Kaag also addressed the ECOSOC HAS meeting, attended by numbers of high level representatives from OCHA, WHO, WFP, IFRC, and other UN agencies who briefed their respective activities as well as the challenges they have been facing in accessing the humanitarian situations and providing services to the affected people during the COVID 19 pandemic.
Bss/PR/TA/RY/20:01 hrs