IOM DG coming to Bangladesh on Sunday

IOM Director General William Lacy Swing is coming to Bangladesh on a four-day visit to see current Rohingya situation. "Yes, he is coming on Sunday and will leave Dhaka on Wednesday," a senior official told UNB. The IOM chief will visit Cox's Bazar from Monday. He is expected to meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, among others, during the visit. Members of the Rohingya ethnic minority from Myanmar's Rakhine state continue to cross the border to seek safety in Bangladesh. As many as 536,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August to escape persecution since August 25. According to IOM Needs and Population Monitoring, UNHCR and other field reports, cross border movement of over 14,000 newly arrived Rohingya has been verified in the last two days. This report is produced by ISCG in collaboration with humanitarian partners and covered October 10-11 while the next report will be issued on October 17. Their arduous journeys from Rakhine villages to the border with Bangladesh took from two to 16 days, and that most Rohingya were forced to pay between Tk5,000 and Tk10,000 each to cross the Naf River by boat, according to a UN report.