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95 Newborns Each day: Rohingya Baby Boom Worries Bangladesh
Some 95 new babies are born every day in Rohingya camps of Bangladesh, according to an official count, sparking population boom concerns in the country hosting hundreds of thousands of minority refugees, mainly Muslims, from Myanmar.
Authorities say the growing Rohingya population in the southeast Cox’s Bazar camps has them worried, prompting birth control steps, including distributing free contraceptives and mass awareness programs.
Around 738,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh after a campaign of persecution and violence launched by the Myanmar military in August 2017, termed ethnic cleansing and possible genocide by the United Nations.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said the birth rate was alarmingly high in the past five years in the refugee camps, with about 35,000 newborns reported every year, averaging more than 95 babies a day.
It also means that the birth rate per 1,000 population in refugee camps housing an estimated one million people is nearly 35, almost double that of the host country Bangladesh, where the birth rate in 2019 was 17.87.
A spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund said 16.5 percent of the refugee population are children under five, which is approximately 150,000.
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