Dhaka – The visiting prosecutor of International Criminal Court, Karim A Khan, has backed a Bangladeshi proposal moved by Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus for convening a special global conference for resolving Rohingya crisis sometime in the next year, an official press statement said on Thursday.
“The UN General Assembly has agreed to hold the conference in 2025,” said a press statement issued by the Chief Adviser’s office said referring to a meeting between the IIC Prosecutor and the Chief Adviser in Dhaka.
The Chief Adviser hoped that a new direction to a sustainable resolution to the Rohingya crisis would be found from the conference, according to the statement.
“The venue, dates, and modalities of the conference will be decided during the first quarter of 2025,” the statement said.
All international stakeholders would be brought to a table to seek a durable solution to the crisis, especially the plight of the Rohingyas and their young children in the camps in Bangladesh during the conference, it said.
“We have to make sure that it does not explode,” Yunus was quoted as saying, referring to the young people growing up without hope in the camps.
The influx of tens of thousands of more Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh in recent months and the latest developments in Myanmar have triggered concerns in Bangladesh, the statement added.
Bangladesh has been hosting more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims who fled persecution in neighbouring Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Of them some 750,000, crossed the border into Bangladesh in 2017 after Myanmar launched a military offensive against the minority group.
During the talks between Khan and Yunus, the Rohingya crisis, the situation in Myanmar, humanitarian efforts for the Rohingyas, and the justice and accountability for the atrocities committed during the July-August mass uprising in Bangladesh were discussed.
The prosecutor informed that his office has formally sought an arrest warrant against Min Aung Hlaing, the chief of the Myanmar military government, for “crimes against humanity” regarding the treatment of the Rohingya minority.
At the meeting, the Chief Adviser reiterated his recent call for a safe zone inside the Rakhine state of Myanmar to aid displaced people and address the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
“The safety of the zone should be guaranteed by the UN. When the fighting stops, people who live in the safe zone can easily return to their localities,” he said.
Yunus also said the Interim Government would pursue charges of crimes against humanity against the Sheikh Hasina regime at the ICC for the massacre during the July-August mass uprising and thousands of cases of enforced disappearances during her nearly 16 years of long stay in power.
The ICC prosecutor said they would like to extend cooperation to the International Crimes Tribunal, the Bangladeshi court, which has issued an arrest warrant against Hasina and members of her political party.
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