Myanmar has agreed to issue national identity cards or NIDs to all Rohingyas after verifying their credentials, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has said, hailing it as an “achievement” of Bangladesh during the just-concluded UN General Assembly in New York.
The foreign ministers of Bangladesh and neighbouring Myanmar discussed the Rohingya issue on the sidelines of the assembly with their Chinese counterpart mediating the talks.
A tripartite working group involving China was also formed, which the foreign minister flagged as yet another accomplishment for Bangladesh.
“It’s good news that China is now very actively engaged on the ground,” he said while sharing the “many achievements” of Bangladesh on the Rohingya issue with the media in the capital on Wednesday.
The minister was speaking after attending a programme organised by the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute on ‘preventing radicalization and violent extremism through empowering youths’.
Bangladesh is currently hosting more than 1.1 million Rohingyas. As many as 750,000 members of the Muslim minority group in Myanmar’s Rakhine state fled ‘ethnic cleansing’ in their homeland in August 2017.
Despite attempts to repatriate the refugees, no-one returned to their homeland citing Myanmar’s failure to create conditions conducive to their “voluntary, safe and dignified” return.
Momen said, during the UN general assembly, the whole world acknowledged that Myanmar created the problem and it was for them to resolve it.
“Myanmar also said they will take back their verified nationals as soon as possible,” he said, adding that Myanmar acknowledged that the form that they distributed among the Rohingyas to be filled up for verification carried many mistakes.
They agreed that they will create new forms and each of their nationals will get NIDs after verification, he said.
