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PM for lasting solution to refugee issue

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Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina addressing “Leaders Summit on Refugees” organised by US President Barack Obama at the UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said Bangladesh looks forward to working with the new Myanmar leadership to find a lasting solution to the refugee issue.

“I’m already in touch with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” she told the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees, organised by US President Barack Obama, at the UN headquarters on Tuesday.

The PM called upon other international partners to remain engaged in the refugee issue.

“As part of our commitment to leave no one behind, we must promote orderly, safe, regular and responsible mobility of people,” Hasina said.

For nearly three decades, Bangladesh has been hosting a large number of refugees and displaced people from Myanmar, she told the Summit.

“With our limited resources, we continue to bear our responsibilities for these people… our local communities create space for their protection and assistance,” the premier said, adding this poses many social, economic, environmental and political challenges as well.

About the Myanmar refugees in camps, she said her government kept investing in their security, health, education and skills.

“For other displaced Myanmar nationals in Bangladesh, we’ve recently carried out a census. We are planning to give them an identity document titled ‘information card’…. This will help them access justice, health, education and other services.”

Hasina said the present world has been witnessing a mass movement of people across national borders while armed conflicts, poverty and climate change are compelling people to flee their countries and undertake perilous journeys.

She observed that despite their different needs, refugees, migrants and other displaced people face some common challenges. “We need to treat them with compassion, solidarity and fairness.”

During Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971, she said, 10 million refugees had migrated to India.

The premier remembered Senator Edward Kennedy’s visit to refugee camps and performances of George Harrison and Ravi Shankar at a historic concert in New York.

Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, PM’s Principal Secretary Abul Kalam Azad and Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque were present.

Source: The Daily Star

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