Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the claims in the July 2019 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute entitled Mapping Conditions in Rakhine State that (a) minimal preparations have been made for any return of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, (b) 320 of the settlements damaged or destroyed during the genocide of 2017 show no signs of reconstruction, (c) 58 remaining settlements were damaged or destroyed after the crisis during 2018 and (d) six suspected military facilities have been built on the sites of destroyed settlements.

​We are aware of the findings of the report published in July 2019 by Australian Strategic Policy Institute. To the best of our knowledge, we agree that destroyed settlements have not been rebuilt. While there may have been some minimal reconstruction, it is not on the original sites. We are also aware of the Myanmar military's use of land previously occupied by the Rohingya. We support the view that conditions on the ground are not yet in place to support repatriation of refugees in Rakhine. We are clear that safe and sustainable returns will not be possible until conditions in Rakhine are significantly improved. It is essential that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is given unfettered access to assess conditions.