Rohingya child refugees in Bangladesh need our help now, says Save The Children CEO

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former prime minister of Denmark, has seen a lot in her nearly two years as head of Save the Children International, but the Rohingya camp she visited at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh was one of the most shocking sights.

Of the 600,000 Rohingyas who have fled from Myanmar into Bangladesh and are living in makeshift huts, more than half are children.

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“When you are there you see that this is a children’s emergency – the tiniest children are walking around barefoot, they have no clothes on, and very small children are carrying even smaller children,” the charity’s chief executive says of her October visit to the camp.

The most vulnerable children are those who have been orphaned – many have seen their family members killed in front of them. Alone in the camp, they risk being snatched by child traffickers operating in the shelters. The vastness of the sprawling camp, which is some distance from a main road, means that anyone can enter.

In addition to handing out basic humanitarian supplies and food, and setting up emergency health units and safe spaces for youngsters, Save the Children is also trying to identify unaccompanied children and reunite them with relatives in the camp. They have told of fleeing terrible atrocities.

“The rape of children, children seeing their family members being burned in their houses, being shot in front of them, having to flee and walk for days to get to Bangladesh – this is a very serious humanitarian operation,” says Thorning-Schmidt who was in Hong Kong for less than a day en route from Beijing to Geneva and set aside time to speak to the South China Morning Post.