LAHORE/ISTANBUL (PR) – The Alkhidmat Foundation, in collaboration with Disaster and Emergency Management Authority Turkey (AFAD) and The Union of NGOs of the Islamic World (UNIW), organised a consultation meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, regarding issues faced by the Rohingya Muslims and to find their potential solutions.
The conference was attended by the delegates of 27 NGOs from worldwide, with aim to work for humanity. Abdul Shakoor, President-AKFP, represented Pakistan in the conference.
The purpose of the conference was to plan and execute relief activities in the light of current situation of Rohingya Muslims. Furthermore, it was decided in the conference how the Foundation can highlight the issue in front of the world especially Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan so that these countries could play their role in providing immediate relief to the Rohingya refugees and also give reach to the other NGOs to perform relief activities to the affected areas.
The participants also stressed that educational institutes should play their roles to highlight this important and critical issue among young generations. Additionally, all were agreed upon that the participant NGOs should improve their working relationships with the active Bangladeshi NGOs, which are working for the relief of Rohingya immigrants, so that relief activities can be performed more effectively with their collaboration.
On this occasion, a seven member committee of NGOs was also formed so that they could monitor and supervise all these activities.
In his address, Abdul Shakoor said that Alkhidmat Foundation Pakistan has been and will continue to provide every possible relief to the refugees.
“As of now, Alkhidmat Foundation has distributed cooked food, 7,000 dry ration packages and clothes, gift hampers for 1,000 children, establishing 5,000 shelter homes, 30 medical camps, 50 hand pumps, 300 toilets and 10 tent schools. Whereas, more than PKR 52 million have been spent on these activities from which 76,000 people have been benefited,” he informed.
Rohingya crisis
Rohingya are ethnically from the Rakhine State in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, previously known as Arakan. They have faced persecution at the hands of Myanmar’s military since the country’s independence in the late 1940s.
In October 2016, a military crackdown in the wake of a deadly attack on an army post sent hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh.
Similar attacks in August 2017 led to the ongoing military crackdown, which has led to a new mass exodus of Rohingya.
More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have sought refuge in and around Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
More than 80 villages in northern Rakhine State have been set ablaze by Myanmar security forces and vigilante mobs since August 25, according to Amnesty International. Myanmar’s government has said that nearly 40 percent of Rohingya villages had been targeted by the army in so-called “clearance operations”, with 176 out of 471 villages emptied of people, and an additional 34 villages “partially abandoned”.
