Washington-based global lender, the World Bank, through concessional lending arms, has gone to bat for Bangladesh to foster its development initiatives since 1972; committing more than $30 billion by backing priorities in economic, social and infrastructural development.

Since 2018, this UN-affiliated multilateral body which is the largest source of financial assistance to developing nations, has committed a total $590 million grant to support Bangladesh to confront the challenges posed by the influx of the forcibly displaced Rohingya.

Recently, the World Bank has been extensively denounced both by policy wonks and mass people after its proposal, through “Refugee Policy Review Framework” (RPRF), on Rohingya’s integration in Bangladesh. How rational is this proposition of the World Bank?

ALSO READ THIS: MEDIA BLOCKED FROM CAMP FOR DISPLACED ROHINGYA

Four years ago, in late August 2017, “breaking news” across the world were dominated by the massive influx of Rohingyas to Bangladesh, a result of military-backed bloody “clearance operation”. A 444-page report of the UN’s Independent Fact-Finding Commission substantiated that more than 7,25,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after this deadly crackdown. The degree of atrocities of this “campaign of terror” embarked on by the military was so intense that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights referred to it as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” while other investigators dubbed it as “genocide”.

In the first three weeks of August 2017, Bangladesh received more refugees than entire Europe did in 2016 during “Syrian crisis”. Since then, Bangladesh has been generously hosting more than 1.2 million Rohingyas as short-term guests ensuring “safe haven” on humanitarian grounds.

Now, Cox’s Bazar-based 13 km long Kutupalong “mega-camp”, the largest refugee settlement camp in the world, is the home to this beleaguered community.

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