A Supreme Court lawyer has moved the High Court seeking directives for a new law to manage and protect refugees at a time when more than 800,000 Rohingya have fled violence in Myanmar to take refuge in southeast Bangladesh.
Lawyer Tanzim Al Islam filed a petition for writ on Sunday saying that laws on refugees have been implemented by many countries including the United States, reports bdnews24.com.
The Bangladesh government, the law ministry and the foreign ministry have been made respondents.
Bangladesh has sheltered the Rohingyas following Section 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or UDHR, Tanzim told bdnews24.com.
“The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol mentions about refugees’ safety but Bangladesh never signed any of them. This has left a legal loophole,” he added.
The lawyer further said the government has sheltered the Rohingyas out of humanity, but hundreds of thousands of them are still coming in to evade the army crackdown in the Rakhine State of Myanmar.
“Formation of an act is a must to manage the huge population and ensure their safety,”
The petition also referred to the camps in Dhaka where ‘Biharis’ or stranded Pakistanis, have been living for decades now.
