Myanmar's parliament approves a budget of about $15 million for the construction of a fence and related projects along the border with Bangladesh in Rakhine state, from which about 700,000 members of its persecuted ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority have fled violence since last August.

India and Canada call for voluntary and safe repatriation of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar and allowing of UN and other international organisations to facilitate the process.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has demanded a “safe, dignified return” for Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, ahead of

Visiting the Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar, Swiss President Alain Berset yesterday said a refugee crisis of this scale put Bangladesh and the international community under enormous pressure to provide shelter and the most urgent services to more than 650'000 people.

More than 100,000 Rohingya refugees huddled in squalid, muddy camps in Bangladesh will be in grave danger from landslides when the mid-year monsoon season begins, a UN humanitarian report said.

Human Rights Watch has demanded suspension of the bilateral plan between Bangladesh and Myanmar on return of the Rohingyas.

The return of Rohingyas is scheduled to begin tomorrow, but some of the major tasks including finalisation of the list of families and setting up of repatriation camps remain incomplete. This makes the start of repatriation on the announced date uncertain.

The locals in Cox's Bazar, who welcomed Rohingya refugees with open arms during the massive influx last year, are now visibly annoyed as prolonged stay of the Myanmar citizens is putting pressure on their livelihoods and causing environmental degradation.

The World Bank has said the Rohingya refugee crisis is growing at a rapid pace in Cox's Bazar and there is an urgent need to support the host communities to cope with the influx and to help those extremely vulnerable.

We welcome the recent agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar for the repatriation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. However, there is ample ground for scepticism regarding the real concerns of the Rohingyas fully addressed by Myanmar.

The Joint Working Group, responsible for overseeing the repatriation of the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, meets in Naypyitaw today amid doubts over safe return and resettlement of the Rohingyas in Rakhine.

Although more than 90 percent of Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar receive emergency food assistance, a major concern is limited access to a well-diversified and balanced diet, says a new study.

Bangladesh police arrested an alleged human trafficker and intercepted two Rohingya refugees preparing to board a boat for Malaysia, officials said yesterday.

In the past weeks, three important developments related to the Rohingya issue took place. First was the agreement between the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar on the refugee repatriation.

Pope Francis refers to refugees who have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh as "Rohingya", using the politically sensitive name for the persecuted minority for the first time on an Asia tour dominated by their plight after meeting some of them in Dhaka.

Though Bangladesh and Myanmar sign a repatriation arrangement document to start a process in next two months, there are too many hurdles to get over before any repatriation to commence, says an international analyst.

UN agencies, the European Union and human rights bodies have urged Myanmar to implement the new deal on repatriation of the Rohingyas who have taken shelter in Bangladesh to escape persecution in Rakhine State.

Conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine State are not in place to enable safe and sustainable returns of Rohingya refugees, UNHCR says

Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to begin repatriation of “hundreds of thousands” of Rohingyas in two months amid the international community's repeated calls for the return of the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals to their homeland.

A US delegation yesterday thanked Bangladesh for its generosity in hosting a huge number of Rohingya refugees despite resource constraints and assured the country of raising the issue at the US senate.