Since late August 2017, more than 725,000 mainly-Muslim Rohingya have left Rakhine state, across the border into southern Bangladesh, fleeing widespread and systematic ethnic violence.
But they left behind at home a ‘vast land not being cultivated’, with an estimated 70% reduction in agricultural production just in Maungdaw District alone, said the UN Development Programme’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, Haoliang Xu, in a recent interview with UN News.
UNDP and the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, are working inside Myanmar, developing community projects that aim to improve livelihoods and build trust.
Mr Xu, sat down with Liling Huang of our Chinese service, noting that many of the communities from different ethnic or religious backgrounds ‘now depending on humanitarian assistance, used to live side by side’.
