Dhaka: Actress Priyanka Chopra, who is also the global UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Child Rights, on Tuesday urged her fans and followers to care for and support the Rohingya refugees.
Priyanka, who is on a field visit in Dhaka, on Monday visited Cox’s Bazaar, one of the largest refugee camps in the world, and shared photographs with Rohingya children on Instagram.
“In the second half of 2017, the world saw horrific images of ethnic cleansing from the Rakhine State of Myanmar (Burma). This violence drove nearly 700,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh – 60 per cent are children! Many months later they are still highly vulnerable, living in overcrowded camps with no idea when or where they will ever belong…even worse, when they will get their next meal,” Priyanka wrote.
“And as they finally start to settle and feel a sense of safety, monsoon season looms…threatening to destroy all that they have built so far. This is an entire generation of children that have no future in sight,” she added.
Priyanka, who had met Syrian refugee children in Jordan last year, says children are at the “forefront of this humanitarian crisis, and they desperately need our help”.
“The world needs to care. We need to care. These kids are our future,” she wrote.
Priyanka also shared a video talking about how the refugees had to travel by foot to enter Bangladesh.
“Their trip here was filled with many hardships and tremendous danger. Many of them made their journey on foot, walking for days through the hills, then floating across the Naf River or the Bay of Bengal on make shift boats… Many of them injured, pregnant, elderly,” she wrote.
“Their ordeal did not end here, after entering Bangladesh, they would often have to wait for days, sleeping in the open fields with no food or water, for aid workers to reach them. For a lot of the Rohingya children, this ordeal will leave them scarred, physically and emotionally, for the rest of their lives,” she added.
Priyanka asked her admirers to help these children “because right now, their future is bleak”. (ANI)