A UK government team tasked with gathering evidence of sexual violence in conflict zones has begun limited deployment to Rohingya refugee camps, months after reports of systematic mass rape by the Burmese military against the Muslim minority group started to emerge.
The UK Foreign Office came under fire this week over claims that its team specializing in gathering evidence of sexual violence in conflict zones has yet to be deployed in the Myanmar conflict.
The Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) group was set up in 2012 by former Secretary of State William Hague in a joint effort with the actor Angelina Jolie to highlight the pervasive use of sexual violence in conflict.
However, despite reports of the mass use of rape, including of children as young as 10, the government has been accused of foot-dragging in not deploying the PSVI.
The Guardian reported on Sunday that the Foreign Office was still assessing the need for a team despite aid agencies reporting the mass use of rape in Rakhine state.
Hague and his former special adviser wrote to the Foreign Office to demand to know what it is doing to investigate and document rape allegations against Burmese forces, the newspaper reported.
The Foreign Office (FCO) said however that some members of the team had now been deployed in the area.
“The head of the FCO’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) is on the ground in the region alongside the UN to meet with survivors, support workers, and government officials,” a spokesperson told Arab News.
The FCO spokesperson also confirmed PSVI would be stepping up its assistance soon. “We will also be sending two deployable civilian experts to Bangladesh to provide further support on responding to sexual violence, including providing advice on investigating and documenting sexual violence.”
The FCO minister Lord Ahmad has previously described reports of sexual violence against the Rohingya as “staggering.”
As many as 600,000 refugees have fled to Bangladesh, with aid agencies, such as Doctors Without Borders and the International Organization for Migration, reporting hundreds of cases of rape and sexual violence among refugees.
A spokesperson from Doctors without Borders (DWB) told Arab News that access to Rakhine state is limited and that access must be “urgently permitted.”
The DWB spokesperson said its teams have only been able to collect testimonies from Rohingya refugees, where DWB runs a clinic in the Kutupalong camp and various health posts in the camps in Cox’s Bazar, and not from within the Rakhine state itself.
Since Aug. 25, DWB has treated over 50 women and girls who are survivors of sexual violence at MSF’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Unit in Kutupalong.
DWB said more than 75 percent of these survivors are Rohingya women and girls who have fled Myanmar due to the crackdown by the military and associated groups against the Rohingya. About 50 percent are aged 18 or under, including several others under the age of 10.
The FCO has said it is assessing what support the UK might provide at Cox’s Bazaar, the refugee site in Bangladesh. The Department for International Development (DFID) has provided £47 million in aid. “UK aid is helping to provide counselling and psychological support that will reach over 10,000 women suffering from the trauma of war and over 2,000 survivors of sexual violence,” it said in a statement.

Source:Arabnews