U.S. creates special envoy for Burma to return Rohingyas home

CAIRO – 27 December 2017: The United States will create a new special envoy for Burma to focus on returning the Rohingya to their homes, a U.S. official told The Washington Post on Wednesday.

He said that negotiations over the significant cut to the United Nations budget will result in freeing more money to peacekeeping missions in Darfur and Haiti, in addition to aid at the Burma crisis.

The U.S. mission to the United Nations said on Sunday that the UN’s 2018-2019 budget would be slashed by over $285 million. The mission’s said reductions would also be made to the UN’s management and support functions. The announcement did not specify the budget’s magnitude.

Earlier, the U.S. dubbed the Myanmar military operation against the Rohingya population as “ethnic cleansing” and threatened targeted sanctions against those responsible for what it called “horrendous atrocities,” according to Reuters.

The U.S. will also pursue accountability through U.S. laws, including possible targeted sanctions against those responsible for the alleged abuses, which have driven hundreds of thousands of the Rohingya community into neighboring Bangladesh, said U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a statement during his visit to Myanmar last week.

The European Council of Rohingya (ERC) said that 2017 has been the worst year in the history of the Rohingya Muslims, who have been subjected to genocide and brutality by the Myanmar army and Buddhist militias since last August.

During 2017, more than 650,000 Rohingya children, men and women were forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, the ERC said in a statement.