Nations have pledged 345 million dollars (294 million euros) to care for Myanmar's Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, an "encouraging" step in the response to the intensifying crisis, the UN said Monday.

Myanmar's government has failed to meet its international obligations and protect Rohingya Muslims from the atrocities taking place in Rakhine state, two UN special advisers said Wednesday.The statement from the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Adama Dieng, and the special adviser on the responsibility to protect, Ivan Simonovic, added the international response to the crisis was a failure."Despite warnings issued by us and by many other officials, the government of

A senior UN official on Tuesday returned empty-handed from five days of talks in Myanmar where he appealed for the safe return of Muslim Rohingyas sheltering in Bangladesh and access for aid workers.Jeffrey Feltman, the UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, discussed the plight of the 582,000 Rohingyas who have fled an army campaign in Myanmar's Rakhine state since late August.Feltman met with Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and military commander-in-chief Gen

At least 10 people drowned and dozens more are missing after a boat packed with Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh sank on Monday, as another 12,000 people joined a half-million-strong exodus sparked by an army crackdown in Myanmar.The boat was carrying an estimated 50 people when it went down in the estuary of the Naf river that divides the two countries, Border Guard Bangladesh area commander Lieutenant Colonel S.M.

The media has "exaggerated" the number of Rohingya refugees fleeing an army crackdown, Myanmar's commander-in-chief said Thursday, in a brash rebuttal of accusations of ethnic cleansing by his forces.Some 520,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar's western Rakhine state since August 25, when the military launched a sweeping campaign against militants from the Muslim minority.

Hasina Begum's earliest memory is of watching the jungle cut down to expand the camp in Bangladesh that is the only home the 31-year-old Rohingya refugee has ever known.Begum is one of about 300,000 Rohingya who escaped turmoil in Myanmar before the latest eruption of violence brought another half a million refugees to Bangladesh, pushing already overcrowded camps to breaking point.She was just five when her family fled persecution of the Muslim minority in Myanmar and has become trapped

A boat packed with Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state capsised late Sunday night near the coast of Bangladesh, leaving at least two people dead and scores missing, officials said.Coast guard and border guard officials said the boat was overloaded with about 100 people when it sank in the mouth of the Naf river that separates Myanmar from its South Asian neighbour Bangladesh."It capsised near (the coastal village of) Galachar with nearly 100 people.

Bangladesh on Thursday announced it would build one of the world's biggest refugee camps to house all the 800,000-plus Rohingya Muslims who have sought asylum from violence in Myanmar.The arrival of more than half a million Rohingya Muslims from Buddhist-dominated Myanmar since August 25 has put an immense strain on camps in Bangladesh where there are growing fears of a disease epidemic.A Bangladesh minister gave details of the mega camp as Myanmar's army blamed Rohingya militants f

Bangladesh is to move to a camp at least 15,000 Rohingya refugees who have settled in a restive hill district near the border with Myanmar, a local official said Sunday.Most of the estimated half a million Rohingya who have arrived in southeastern Bangladesh over the last five weeks after fleeing violence in Myanmar are crammed into the camps that have sprung up on government land.But thousands of the mainly Muslim refugees have settled in the nearby district of Bandarban, part of the Chittag