Kelly T. Clements, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, concluded a four-day visit to Bangladesh. While in Cox’s Bazar, she met with local officials to discuss the ongoing operational response and opportunities to further aid Bangladeshi communities generously hosting refugees.

More than 500,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have been registered in a joint registration exercise by the Bangladesh authorities and UNHCR. For many of these refugees, it is the first time they have an identity card.

Nobel Peace laureates Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland, Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, and Iran’s Shireen Ebadi visited refugee settlements in Bangladesh to raise awareness about the plight of Rohingya refugees. The laureates’ visit took place as part of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

Over a quarter of a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have now been jointly registered and provided with identity cards by the Bangladesh authorities and UNHCR.

Over the past 10 days UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has received reports of some 30 improvised rafts arriving from Myanmar, carrying more than a thousand people. Unable to pay for the crossing, refugees are building rafts from whatever material they can get their hands on – mostly bamboo poles and empty jerry cans tied together with rope and covered with plastic sheets. More than 200 Rohingya refugees are known to have drowned in shipwrecks and boat incidents since the start of the crisis on 25 August.

Registration, including birth registration, for all refugees is critical. UNHCR’s family counting exercise which began on 3 October has now been completed. UNHCR teams continue to count new arrivals and update the data for families who may move within settlements. In parallel, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) is conducting biometrics registration for some 830,000 individuals, including new arrivals. UNHCR will work jointly with authorities to update data records and share with the authorities complementary data which UNHCR gathered on the location of individuals and on family composition. This is expected to result in good data set that will enable UNHCR and the authorities to better plan together, with other partners.

Since Sunday night, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh through the Anjuman Para border crossing point in Ukhia district in the country’s south-east. Many say they had initially chosen to remain in their homes in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state despite repeated threats to leave or be killed. They finally fled when their villages were set on fire. The refugees UNHCR staff spoke to yesterday described walking for around a week to reach the Bangladesh border. Some crossed into the country on Sunday night, others throughout Monday in the heat and rain.

The 190 active community outreach members (COMs), which cover four areas of Kutupalong, including the makeshift, Nayapara extension area and Chakmarkul, have conducted over 150 home visits and more than 210 information sessions, reaching out to some 3,500 refugees. Forty cases under monitoring have been resolved after actions by COMs and partners this week.

The Government of Bangladesh and UNHCR launched a joint verification exercise for Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar. The exercise will help consolidate a unified database for the purposes of protection, identity management, documentation, provision of assistance, population statistics, and ultimately solutions for an estimated 900,000 refugees who have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh. It is expected to take up to six months to complete.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees undertook his 2nd visit to Bangladesh from 1-3 July. He accompanied the first visit of the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres with World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim. The Executive Director of UNFPA, Natalia Kanem, also accompanied the mission. The World Bank announced $480 million in grant aid for the refugee response.