60,000 Births Per Year in Rohingya Camps in Bangladesh Falsely Linked to India

This report about 60,000 births in Rohingya camps is from Bangaldesh.

A claim is going viral on social media which states that 60,000 children were born in Rohingya camps in one year in India.

(Archives of other posts sharing the same claim can be seen here and here.)

What's the truth?: This report about 60,000 births in Rohingya camps is from Bangladesh and not India.

• The official statistics provided by World Health Organisation (WHO) states that approximately 100 children are born daily in Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, totalling nearly 2,00,000 births from 2017 to 2023.

How did we find out the truth?: We performed a relevant keyword search on Google using 'Rohingya 60,000 births at camp' and this led us to an article published in February 2018 by India TV Hindi and Quint Hindi.

• The article stated that child births were expected to reach 60,000 in Rohingya camps in Bangladesh.

• The report carried the statement of Dr Poonam Khetrapal, the South-East Asia Regional Director of the World Health Organization (WHO), who described the situation of the Rohingyas who have fled Myanmar.

• She further estimated that approximately 60,000 babies will be born in these refugee camps over the next year (2019).

• She added that 6,88,000 Rohingyas are living in the refugee camps of Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.

• The article does not mention anything about the immigration in India.

More reports: We further checked United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) website for the official figure.

• It also specified that, as of 31 January 2022, more than 46,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, mainly from Myanmar and Afghanistan, are registered with UNHCR India.

• In 2018, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reported that over 60 Rohingya babies are born every day in the refugee camps in Bangladesh.

• It added that more than 16,000 Rohingya babies have been born in refugee camps and informal settlements in Bangladesh in the nine months.

• Another report from 2023 stated that the Office of Refugee Relief and Repatriation confirmed that approximately 100 children are born each day in Rohingya camps, totaling nearly 200,000 births between 2017 and 2023.

• The status of refugees settled in camps in Bangladesh can be viewed here.

Conclusion: A misleading claim about 60,000 births at Rohingya camps in India per year is going viral online.

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