Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what additional funding her Department has allocated to tackling the covid-19 pandemic in relation to refugees from Burma in (a) Bangladesh and (b) Thailand.

We have allocated over £10 million to support COVID-19 preparedness efforts in the Rohingya camps and surrounding host communities in Bangladesh. This contribution has been allocated from previously announced funding and includes establishing treatment centres; distributing soap and building more handwashing structures; and producing and rolling out a range of communications tools to share vital information, including by reaching vulnerable older people with advice.

A majority of DFID’s activities on the Thai/Myanmar border are now being focused on COVID-19 preparedness and response. On the Thai/Myanmar border, we have provided an additional funding to support the work of The Border Consortium (TBC) across nine of the refugee camps. On the Myanmar side we planning to provide funding of around funding, also through TBC. The funding will be used to carry out COVID-19 awareness activities and messaging in local languages, set up of hand washing facilities, increasing the value of the food vouchers to help households cope with lockdown training front line health workers and topping up civil society emergency response. This will benefit the refugees in Thailand and IDPs in Myanmar.