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Trump said the 1st amendment -which stands for freedom of belief and speech- makes clear “that our rights do not come from our government; they come from God”. He regretted “80% of the world’s population live in countries where religious liberty is threatened, restricted or even banned”.

The percentage he cites comes from a report from the Pew Research Center in 2016, where this independent think tank also mentions Muslims being targeted in the United States and directly links this to the current present president of the country:

“In the United States, Muslims were the targets of derogatory rhetoric and proposed discrimination. In July, Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump criticized the parents of a Muslim soldier who was killed in Iraq (…). Later in the year, President-elect Trump appeared to stand by plans for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the United States and a proposed requirement that U.S. Muslims register in a database”, the report summary reads.

>>> You may also read: Alicia and Aladdin, the beautiful love story of a Catholic and a Muslim<<<

But Donald Trump’s speech on religious freedom this Monday at the UN ignored his rethoric and measures against Muslims: “As we speak, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Yazidis and many other people of faith are being jailed, sanctioned, tortured and even murdered, often at the hands of their own government, simply for expressing their deeply held religious beliefs. So hard to believe”.

He called upon all the countries of the world “to end religious persecution”, “repeal laws restricting freedom of religion and belief, protect the vulnerable, the defenceless and the oppressed”. The US president assured: “Protecting religious freedom is one of my highest priorities and always has been”.

“Repeal laws restricting freedom of religion and belief, protect the vulnerable, the defenceless and the oppressed”

What he did not mention was the “temporary ban” on Muslims he promised to implement if he became president and which finally has gotten a version of it for some Muslim majority countries plus Venezuela and North Korea after the judges declared his first travel ban illegal.

He recalled recent “evil attacks” against worshippers in sinagogues in the US, in mosques in New Zealand and churches in Sri Lanka and urged every nation “to increase the prosecution and punishment of crimes against religious communities”. “There cannot be greater crime than that”, he said.

>>> You may also read: Attacks against mosques are more usual than you might think: they are committed by anti-Muslim terrorists and also by groups like ISIS <<<

Trump announced a coalition of US businesses for the protection of “all faiths” in the workplace, although he did not go into detail. “True tolerance means respecting the right of all people to express their deeply held religious beliefs”, he pointed out before saying to the victims of religious persecution that the US “will always stay at your side”.

Last July Donald Trump held a short meeting with people who survived religious persecution worldwide. Sitting on his chair at the Oval Office and surrounded by them, he talked with them in front of the cameras (watch White House video).

The victims were grateful for the opportunity to be listened, like Farid Ahmed, a victim of the Christchurch attacks against Muslims who became known after publicly forgiving the terrorist. But there were also awkward moments during the meeting with Trump, such as when a Rohingya refugee asked him for solutions to go back home after being forced to flee to Bangladesh together with another 740,000 Muslims since 2017. “Where is that exactly?”, Trump asked. “Burma”, an official had to clarify (meaning the state nowadays known as Myanmar). Or like when he asked Nobel Peace Prize Nadia Murad why she obtained the award. She is a Yazidi woman survivor of ISIS genocide against this religious community who brought up attention worldwide about these mass killings, mainly in Iraq.

The law known as “Muslim ban” or “Travel ban” finally included countries which are not Muslim majority nations: North Korea and Venezuela. But it kept Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Iran among those with restrictions, including no travel at all for Syrians and North Korea people. Iraq and Sudan, which where among the countries in the first executive order, where finally dropped.

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La entrada Trump in the UN: “Protecting religious freedom is one of my highest priorities” se publicó primero en Salam Plan.

While being Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, the socialist politician has expressed on more than one occasion his interest in tackling hatred and prejudice against Muslims, be it the 25 million Europeans who, it is estimated, follow this religion, or foreigners. There are two key statements he has made in this regard this year, which offer a hint to what his approach might be in regard to Islamophobia as the new head of European diplomacy:

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1. “Islam did not arrived in a rubber boat (…). It is part of European culture,” he said at the opening of a series of conferences entitled “Dialogue on open societies”, promoted by his Ministry in Casa Árabe, a Spanish public institution whose missions include the fight against Islamophobia.

The minister underlined that day, on January 14 of this year, that Spain is the part of Europe where Islam has been most lasting and remains “alive in language, in architecture, in Spanish demography.” In Spain, Muslims make up 4% of the population, with about 2 million Muslims and 43% of these being Spanish.

For Borrell, it is the presence of more than seven centuries of Islam in Spain that grants its country part of its character of “exceptionality” that is adduced in Europe. He stressed: “We must integrate the Islamic factor in an appropiate measure. Yes, there is an Arab [and Muslim] pillar in the European culture.”

Borrell said in that conference as well that “in the face of closed and xenophobic visions, we must bet on an open society” and regretted that in Spain “there are emerging parties that want Muslims to be considered enemies who must be expelled from the country.”

2. “We are studying – because it seems reasonable to us [the Spanish Administration]- that Islamophobia, like anti-Semitism, is considered a manifestation of hatred towards other human beings and receives the same kind of condemnation.”

This was Borrell’s response to Salam Plan in a press conference, when this website asked him about the possible specific classification of Islamophobia in the Spanish Penal Code or the separate registration of Islamophobic hate crimes in the statistics, in line with what United Nations and international experts ask for. It was during a press conference offered by the Spanish Foreign Minister after meeting with the Secretary General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, in Madrid last March.

“Together we have to share a fight against the messages of xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism … in general against hate messages. Join our struggles against terrorism and extremism, common enemy, “he had previously declared.

The need to legally reflect Islamophobia separately is clear to both the UN and the OSCE or the editors of the European Report on Islamophobia. “It would be necessary to know in how many cases have been prosecuted hate crimes against the Muslim community [to] know the seriousness and extent of this problem,” UN special rapporteur on the rights of minorities, Fernand de Varennes, explained after visiting Spain in January.

The breakdown by ethnic and religious groups in statistics of hate crimes for him is “indispensable”. The rapporteur, did not want to give an opinion on the need or not to penalize specifically Islamophobia in the Spanish law on that date, as he recognized he needed to study the Spanish situation more in depth before drawing a conclusion on that respect.

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La entrada New head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell against Islamophobia: “Islam did not arrive in a rubber boat: it is part of the European culture” se publicó primero en Salam Plan.

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Ramia Chaoui does not want to go alone to the demonstration of this International Women’s Day in her city, Barcelona (Spain). But not only because it is more pleasant to attend in good company, but because she knows that she will be exposed to contempt or worse by some non-Muslim women. This happened last year to other Muslims like her who took to the streets to demand equality for women.

This time they have organized themselves in advance to go together and create what Chaoui calls a “safe space”. “Among all the things that affect me as a woman, like the rest, I also want to claim my presence on the streets and my space and my place”, this insurance consultant and Youtuber, better known as Ramia Schannel on social media, explains.

“Feminism is not having one [unique] conception of being a woman but rather granting women the ability to be anything they want and to give them the opportunities to make the choices for themselves”

— Hajar El Jahidi, European Forum of Muslim Women

“Feminism is not having one [unique] conception of being a woman but rather granting women the ability to be anything they want and to give them the opportunities to make the choices for themselves”, says the advocacy coordinator of the European Forum of Muslim Women based in Brussels, Hajar El Jahidi.

This Canadian-Morrocan woman makes clear that the situation described by Ramia Chaoui is not an exception: “There are feminist groups that often forget or exclude minority groups such as women of color or religious minorities.” Jahidi assures that “we are impacted by gender inequality the same way as other women”, in addition to facing discrimination because of their faith.

“The feminist movement in Greece has tried to impose another oppression, telling us what we should do and what not”

— Anna Stamou, Muslim Association of Greece

Anna Stamou is director of an export and import company in Athens. She is also the marketing director of the Muslim Association of Greece. “All women, regardless of their religion or ideology, have been discriminated against the men priority,” she recalls and asks for unity for women.

Stamou does not feel identified with the feminist movement in her country, though, because she says that “they have tried to impose another oppression, telling us what we should do and what not. The feminist movement in my country considers Muslim women oppressed, brainwashed and unable to form their own opinion.” Even so, this 8th of March she will participate in the mobilizations and the strike for the International Women’s Day, to stand up for women’s equality rights.

>>> You may also read: Muslim and feminist? These women show it is possible<<<

Neither submissive nor stupid

It is the demand for equality that Muslim women ask not only towards men, but towards some non-Muslim women who insult them or believe that they can not be feminists. They repeat for the umpteenth time that the veil or hijab is a personal and religious option. They do also condemn those policies in countries where women are forced to wear it.

The recently appointed High Representative of the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), Miguel Ángel Moratinos, even highlighted this week on Twitter that in his fight for equality for women he will also include “the perception of Muslim women.”

“I do not accept that other women educate me, because I believe that I have enough tools, knowledge and critical thinking for me to rethink myself the questions of how I choose to lead my life and my spirituality,” explains Chaoui, from Barcelona.

“I do not accept that other women educate me, because I believe that I have enough tools, knowledge and critical thinking for me to rethink myself the questions of how I choose to lead my life and my spirituality”

— Ramia Chaoui, assurance consultant

The chairperson of the Citizen Platform Against Islamophobia and CEO of the Halal Institute in Spain, Isabel Romero, says that “of course” she takes part in the feminist strike and will be demonstrating. She asks “to leave us alone with what we wear or what we do not wear. If there are Muslim women who decide to cover themselves with the hijab, because they think that is part of their religious commitment, they are not hurting anyone.” By the way, she does not wear a headscarf.

Not dressing with a veil, the discrimination suffered by Romero is minor, she admits. But the tables turn when others learn about their faith: “I have been a professional for many years and at the moment in which I identify myself as a Muslim woman, it seems that I can only comment from that axis (and) it seems that I cannot give an opinion on economy, society or anything, just because I am Muslim.”

“I have been a professional for many years and at the moment I identify myself as a Muslim woman, it seems that I cannot give an opinion on economy, society or anything”

— Isabel Romero, Citizen Platform Against Islamophobia

Faced with the image of a submissive woman, Romero emphasizes that different rights of women such as divorce or inheritance have already been established in the Quran. The Islamologist and professor of the University of Barcelona, ​​Dolors Bramon, who is not a Muslim, also considers that the sacred book of Islam was revolutionary for women’s rights. She explains it in her book Ser mujer y musulmana (Being a Woman and Muslim)  (Ed. Bellaterra) and explained it HERE on Salam Plan.

Aurora Ali is secretary general of the Muslim Association for Human Rights, based in Spain. “Muslim women are not clothes”, she answers to those who believe that headscarf and feminism are not compatible. “Wearing the hijab right now is an act of bravery, a feminist claim, because ‘it is my faith and I am going to wear it and I decide on my body’, ” she claims. Like Romero, she recognizes that on the street she has the “privilege” of not being an object of hatred because she is Muslim, since she has chosen not to wear hijab.

“As soon as they see that you are a Muslim woman the hate speech is directly the typical one of: ‘your country’, ‘in Saudi Arabia’, ‘in Iran’ … Then the attacks follow and then the terrorist insult, after [calling you] ‘submissive'”

— Aurora Ali, Muslim Association for Human Rights

She says that she has suffered the so-called “gender Islamophobia” on social media. “As soon as they see that you are a woman, you are a Muslim, then the hate speech is directly the typical one of: ‘your country’, ‘in Saudi Arabia’, ‘in Iran’ … Tatata, tatata”, she lists with glut. And she adds: “They start with this, then the attacks follow and then the terrorist insult usually comes, after [calling you] ‘submissive’. And this happens to virtually every woman who is visibly Muslim in their social networks. ”

She confesses that it is precisely that comparison of Muslims to terrorists the insult that has hurt her most, but not when getting it on Twitter or Facebook, but from the Administration in training courses against violent radicalization and terrorism. She cannot go into detail on this, due to a confidentiality clause she signed.

Double glass ceiling

Equality, equality, equality. It is the concept cited by all these women when asked about their claim this International Women’s Day. They also fight for the empowerment of women, the end of the so-called “patriarchy“, against glass ceilings to reach high positions or the discrimination in the labor market, in society … struggles equal to those of other feminists which for Muslim women sometimes become double as difficult, though.

The most common discrimination that visibly Muslim women -meaning the ones who wear a headscarf- face twofold is found in the labor market, according to several interviewees of this article and data which confirm that.

“The real fight for social justice exists when we fight for another human’s rights even if we don’t agree with or understand them”

— Hajar El Jahidi, European Forum of Muslim Women

Women wearing a headscart in the photo of their CV only received an invitation to a job interview in 3% of cases in Germany, according to a study on “Forgotten women” carried out in 2016 in eight European countries by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR). In Belgium, 44% of employers admitted that wearing a hijab could negatively influence the candidate’s selection.

Faced with incomprehension or rejection of Islamic feminism, the spokesperson of the European Forum of Muslim Women Hajar El Jahidi asks not to be marginalized: “The real fight for social justice exists when we fight for another human’s rights even if we don’t agree with or understand them.”

“It’s time for women especially to come together a lot more, to stand together in solidarity against all of these issues and not just speak but to act together and stand up for each other,” executive director of the Islamic Society of Britain, Julie Siddiqi, has asked on a video released by the British NGO Tell Mama. European Muslim women also want equality… and inclusion in the feminism movement.

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La entrada Muslim European women claim their place in feminism se publicó primero en Salam Plan.

She already won the Sakharov prize conceded by the European Parliament in 2016 and is good will Ambassador for the United Nations, among other prizes she has been recognized with around the globe.

She was 21 when ISIS appeared in her little village in the north of Iraq on August 15^th 2014. The terrorists killed her mother and six of her brothers, apart from many other women and men. They kidnapped her and sold her as a sex slave. But she managed to escape and not only tell her story, but the story of thousands of Yazidis suffering under ISIS.

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She found strength out of her tragedy and rose as a strong voice for the Yazidi people, because she said to herself she would be “the last girl”, like her book (Tim Duggan Books) says. The testimony of her captivity and her fight against the terrorists has been heared all around the world. Thanks to her, people got to know that there is exists a minority called “Yazidi”, from an ancient monotheist religion from which only about one million worshippers remain, according to Nadia.

The Nobel Peace Prize comes to complete a happy year for her: she got engaged in August to another Yazidi activist. “Yesterday was a special day for Abid Shamdeen and I. We are very thankful and humbled for all the wishes & support from our family & friends. The struggle of our people brought us together & we will continue this path together. Thank you for your support everyone!”, she announced on Twitter.

She has started a new life in Germany, although she travels a lot so that no one forgets. MEP Beatriz Becerra defended her candidacy for the Sakharov Prize and knows her well. “Normally, someone who has gone through something like what she has, would be devoted to reconstructing her life and try to survive”, she said to Salam Plan. But Nadia is not “normal”. And she does not seek revenge, but “democratic justice”, the European politician highlighted.

“She is a sweet person, charming, apparently fragile physically speaking, but nothing stays on her way. No door keeps closed for her”

— Beatriz Becerra, MEP

“She is a sweet person, charming, apparently fragile physically speaking, but nothing stays on her way. No door keeps closed for her”, she added.

Among her allies, Nadia Murad counts on the United Nations, the European Parliament and voices as strong as the human rights barrister Amal Clooney, who also defends her cause and works for the terrorists to pay at the highest courts for the crimes they have committed.

Besides, Nadia Murad has also created Nadia’s Initiative, an organization “aimed at increasing advocacy for women and minorities and assisting to stabilize and redevelop communities in crisis”. Currently, they are focusing on Sinjar region in Iraq, where she comes from. All this work and prizes… and she seemed fragile at first sight. Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize 2018.

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La entrada Nadia Murad, the Nobel Peace Prize who transformed her tragedy into her strength se publicó primero en Salam Plan.

A group of grannies agrees to go together to the market in their town because they are afraid of immigrants coming to rape them. It is not a fictional scene. It is what is really happening in Hungary, as described by Edit Inotai, an analyst at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy (CEID) in Hungary, on a telephone conversation with Salam Plan. She cannot help but laughing at a situation that seems ridiculous to her. “There are not even immigrants here,” she says.

László Cselényi, former director of the Hungarian international television Duna TV, criticizes that there is no real government programme. “They are based on exploiting fear of the unknown, fostering hatred towards other religions and cultures,” he argues.

More and more Hungarians agree with the extreme defense of Hungarian culture as they think they could be facing a flood of illegal immigrants who are potential terrorists because they come from countries with a Muslim majority, as Orban’s government puts it. According to it, thousands of them are waiting on the other side of the border fence raised during the European refugee crisis to cross it as soon as they can. Orbán and his party, Fidesz, have been repeating this idea of ​​the ‘invading threat’ for years.

“It’s more of a cultural thing, to maintain the European society. I don’t think we Hungarians have a strong Christian faith, like the Poles,” Inotai points out. “I also have conservative friends who travel a lot abroad and say they see a lot of Muslim people and tell me: ‘we don’t want a country with such diversity'”, adds the analyst.

In words of the government’s spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, the people who would arrive in Hungary should the Executive accept the current quota of about 1,200 refugees or future quotas, would just bring “problems” with them. Orbán’s team does not distinguish between asylum seekers and economic migrants, so Kovacs denies their admittance as a human rights issue. “The government firmly rejects the principle that current migration should be seen as a human right,” he recently said.

“The government firmly rejects the principle that current migration should be seen as a human right”

The prime minister was re-elected last Sunday with 49% of the votes and a 70% of participation to the surprise of researchers, acknowledges Inotai, who thought that high participation would favor the opposition. In addition, another 20% of the votes was taken by Jobbik, the party which formerly was the far-right-wing representative in the country and which, for these elections, tried to swap into moderation and snatch votes from Fidesz.

Orbán said in an interview with the German newspaper Bild last January that for him, the refugees “are not refugees, but Muslim invaders”. He argued that is the reason why many Syrians had tried to reach prosperous Germany before going through “stable” countries like Hungary. It was in 2015 that many asylum seekers actually passed through the Magyar country, but most of them stayed there only during the days that the Orbán Executive prevented them from taking trains at the Keleti station in Budapest to continue their way out of the country.

“All terrorists are basically immigrants,” he said in another interview, this one with Politico in 2015, although it is an idea sustained over time by the Hungarian leader.

Propaganda without effective counter-campaign

This barrage of statements against foreigners, especially against Muslim foreigners, found almost no ideas or contrary explanations in the public domain. Little did it matter that most of the terrorists who have attacked in recent years in Europe were born or raised here, like those who killed in Spain in 2017 or like the terrorists of the Paris attacks in 2015. Neither did it matter that the vast majority of terrorists had nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers who arrived in the midst of the refugee crisis in Europe – although some did get away, like the teenager who attacked with an ax in a Bavarian commuter train.

It did not even matter that for mere practical reasons it might be interesting to host future workers in an economy that is certainly going well with only around 5% of unemployment, which nevertheless requires labor force in sectors such as construction, health or education, according to Inotai. She recognizes that the Hungarian language is very complicated to learn for foreigners, though.

And, while for the elections of 2014 some media had already closed and some NGOs critical of the government had already been raided in their headquarters, for this election the media and political opposition had virtually disappeared. Cselényi recalls that a friend of Orbán named Mészáros Lörinc owns 18 local and regional newspapers “that disseminate the same propaganda content”. Inotai adds that although there is still an important critical newspaper in Budapest, regional radio stations are also uncritical and only on the internet there is a broader spectrum with divergent opinions to those of Orbán. But older people in the provinces do not access these media, she thinks.

‘Serious risk for the rule of law’

This week the Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Judith Sargentini presented a report on the political situation in Hungary in view of the possibility that the Magyar State is failing to comply with the principles of the European Union of respect for human dignity, democracy, plurality, tolerance, etc. established in Article 2 of the Lisbon Treaty.

“Since 2012, the (Hungarian) Constitution has been changed six times. Justice has lost independence in favor of control of the Executive”, the MEP of The Greens highlighted at a press conference. She also pointed to issues such as the closure of media, a “new legislation that affects the freedom of religion, with already registered churches that were removed from registration,” or harassment of some NGOs and problems for freedom of expression.

Despite accusations by Fidesz’s MEPs of publishing the report four days after the elections in their country as a revenge, Sargentini stressed that she initially planned to publish it in March and it was precisely postponed not to interfere in the election campaign. In addition, she underlined that her report is based on facts documented by bodies outside the European Parliament, such as the United Nations or the Hungarian courts themselves.

An OSCE report on the 2014 elections already put in serious doubt the cleanliness of those elections, since Fidesz “enjoyed an undue advantage due to restrictive campaign regulations, biased media coverage and campaign activities that blurred the separation between the political party and the State”. On this occasion, the OSCE has emphasized that the news programmes on TV, for example, gave the government version and that the opposition had no real option to publicize its message.

The opposition does not want immigrants either

However, the opposition’s message would not have really refuted the anti-immigrant propaganda of Orbán’s team. For Inotai and Cselényi, there is no doubt that this year’s elections have suffered from a lack of plurality in speeches, not only because of the media panorama, but also because of the Hungarian opposition parties.

“The opposition parties ignored the issue of immigration – erroneously – to avoid falling into the trap of Fidesz. They did not dare to go against public opinion, given that they accused them of being agents in the service of foreign interests,” Cselényi explains.

“The opposition was very distressed about this topic. No one is really in favor of immigration, because society does not want it”

“The opposition was very distressed about this issue. No one is really in favor of immigration, because society does not want it,” Inotai says. There is another factor that explains the triumph of the speech of fear in Hungary, according to this expert. “It is not only the anti-Muslim propaganda, it is also the feudal situation of Hungary. The best results of Fidesz have been in the provinces, where they receive state aid with community work programmes. Many people live from it. They are very poor and in these areas there is no other work.”

The ‘Sargentini report’ now enters a period of amendments and will be finally voted on next September. In case of obtaining at least one third of the agreement of the European Parliament, Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty will apply, which would lead to sanctions against the Magyars for violating the rule of law according to European regulations.

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La entrada This is why hate speech is so successful in Hungary se publicó primero en Salam Plan.

Since a wave of violence against Rohingyas erupted less than two months ago, 320,000 children have arrived in Bangladesh, making up 60% of this Muslim minority refugees, according to Unicef. More than 2 out of 10 of them suffer malnutrition and 145,000 under the age of 5 are “on the verge” of suffering it, according to these organizations. In addition, every week there are 12,000 more children arriving.

More than 2 out of 10 children are malnourished and 145,000 children under 5 are “on the verge of suffering” malnutrition

“On the way we saw a lot of dead people dead, their heads and limbs chopped off”, said one of those affected to the BBC while getting into Bangladesh. The testimonies of other refugees collected by Save The Children indicate that their villages got completely burned, many people were killed and women raped while they fled.

Fatima was among those women. She left Myanmar with her three children after finding her husband dead in her village. “There have been times I have not been able to eat in three days because there is no food. My little son was about to die for lack of food”. Now she feels “happy” because she can finally cook something else than just lentils for her children.

Rohingya villages got completely burned, many people were killed and women raped while they fled. A third of this Muslim minority has already crossed into neighboring Bangladesh

The United Nations has described the Rohingya situation in Myanmar as “ethnic cleansing”, while Aung San Suu Kyi – the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and current de facto president of that country – is criticized for letting the army continue to perpetrate the attacks. The military continue to exercise much control in ancient Burma and it is estimated that one-third of the 1.2 million Rohingya Muslim people of Rakhine State in Myanmar has already crossed into Bangladesh.

“Many Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh have witnessed atrocities in Myanmar that no child should ever see, and all of them have suffered tremendous losses”, Unicef ​​Executive Director Anthony Lake said in a statement. “These children urgently need food, clean water, sanitation, and vaccines to protect them from illnesses that arise in emergencies. But they also need help to overcome all what they have already suffered”.

Rohinghya refugees watch their new homes in the refugee camp of Kutupalong (Bangladesh) in September 2017. © Unicef ​​/ LeMoyne

In the report Outcast and desperate: Rohingya refugee children face a perilous future, Unicef ​​shows how the majority of the refugees live in improvised and overcrowded settlements, with risk of diseases and lack of means to help the refugees. The United Nations organization for children indicates that the Government of Bangladesh is endeavoring to welcome them, but more aid is needed.

“In more than 20 years of humanitarian work I have never seen people in such extreme situations, especially children”

Unicef ​​and Save The Children agree that the greatest dangers now for Rohingya refugee children are cholera and malnutrition. “We are seeing an alarming number of children arriving desperately hungry and malnourished. Then, in the camps, these children do not have any kind of hygiene, they live surrounded by dirt, contaminated water and depending on the food portion they receive to survive”, said Unni Krishnan, director of the Save The Children Emergency Unit.

This NGO estimates that some 281,000 people urgently need food assistance to avoid malnutrition; including the already mentioned 145,000 children under 5 and more than 50,000 pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. Children are “at serious risk of contracting diseases such as cholera, which for children like these can be fatal”, warns Krishnan. “In more than 20 years of humanitarian work I have never seen people in such extreme situations, especially children.”

Rohingya refugees cross from Myanmar to Bangladesh in October 2017. © Unicef ​​/ LeMoyne

Burmese law denies nationality to its Rohingya inhabitants, who have endured “repression and discrimination” for decades, Human Rights Watch said. 120,000 of them continue to be displaced within their own country due to waves of violence in 2012 and 2016.

La entrada Thousands of Rohingya children are still in danger after fleeing violence in Myanmar se publicó primero en Salam Plan.