Did Rohingya refugee camps in India record 60,000 births in a year? Fact Check

A claim is being shared on social mediat claiming that Rohingya Muslim migrant camps in India have recorded births of 60,000 babies within a year.

1 साल में रोहिंग्या

शिविरों में 60 हजार बच्चे पैदा हुए हैं..
ये शरण में आए हैं, या हनीमून पर ?

साजिश है देश के खिलाफ़ pic.twitter.com/46aeGvEWMU

— ज्ञानवीर माथुर ( BNS ) (@gyanveerBns) March 21, 2022

The post on X reads: “शिविरों में 60 हजार बच्चे पैदा हुए हैं.. ये शरण में आए हैं, या हनीमून पर ? साजिश है देश के खिलाफ़” [Translated into English, it reads: “Rohingya in 1 year…60 thousand children were born in the camps… Have they come for shelter, or on a honeymoon? It’s a conspiracy against the country.”] It has been shared here and here.

FACT-CHECK

This claim was made in March 2022 when the Rohingya refugees issue rocked the country and not the latest. When we searched for news related to Rohingya camps in India, some figures on their camps were available from the UNHCR data which said that more than 46,000 Rohingya refugees were registered in India as of January 31, 2022. Rohingyas mainly came from Myanmar.

The Indian government has clarified in Parliament that there are no exact figures regarding the number of Rohingyas living in the country. “It is estimated that about 40,000 Rohingyas from Myanmmar have illegally entered into India,” stated then Union State Minister of Home Kirin Rijiju in Rajya Sabha, replying to an unstarred question in 2017.

Otherwise, there is no official information about the number of childbirths in the Rohingya camps in India so far.

However, further search on Rohingya camps showed that Dr. Poonam Khetrapal, the South-East Asia Regional Director of the World Health Organization (WHO), deplored the horrifying conditions in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. She said way back in 2018 that an estimated “60,000 babies will be born in these refugee camps over the next year,” referring to Bangladesh, not India.

Hence, the claim of 60,000 births a year in Rohingya camps is not from India but of Bangladesh camps.

Claim: Within a year, 60,000 babies have been born in Rohingya camps in India.

Conclusion: The claim is false. According to Dr. Poonam Khetrapal of WHO, in 2018, an estimated 60,000 childbirths were expected in Rohingya camps in Bangladesh. There is no such figure available in India officially.

Rating: Misrepresentation —