A growing number of Muslim Rohingya children are going hungry and severe malnutrition.
Their stomach is bloated and their skin clings tightly to the bones of their tiny arms and legs.
They’re scared they won’t live much longer. They barely have any food. On some days they can only scrape together a few bites of rice.
Myanmar’s child malnutrition rate was already among the region’s highest, but it’s an increasingly familiar sight in the country’s westernmost state of Rakhine, which is home to almost all of the country’s 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims.
They are stuck in villages isolated by systematic discrimination, with restrictions on their movement and limited access to food, clean water, education and health care.
With seasonal rains beating down on the plastic tents and bamboo shacks inside Rohingya camps, the situation has become even more miserable and dangerous for kids.
Naked boys and girls run barefoot on the muddy, narrow pathways, or play in pools of raw sewage, exposing them to potential waterborne diseases that kill. Some have black hair tinged with patches of red or blond, a telltale sign of nutrient deficiency commonly seen in places experiencing famine.
The situation is deplorable.
Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation, only recently emerged from a half century of repressive military rule and self imposed isolation. Despite occasional expressions of concern, the U.S., Britain and others in the international community have largely stood by as conditions for the Rohingya deteriorated.
Some ambassadors and donor countries say privately that coming down too hard on the new, nominally civilian government will undermine efforts to implement sweeping reforms and note there has already been a dramatic backslide. Others don’t want to jeopardize much needed multi billion dollar development projects in the country.
But their hesitancy to act has emboldened Buddhist extremists, now dictating the terms of aid distribution in Rakhine.
The government claims ethnic Rohingya are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh and denies them citizenship, even though many of their families arrived generations ago.
Indeed, unable to work, and without a husband help, mothers had a hard time finding enough to eat. They were unable to produce milk. The food rations they got were small. Sometimes they didn’t get any at all. Mother knew her baby was sick, but she didn’t understand malnutrition was to blame.
How can we help them?