The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) yesterday lauded government steps in recent years and expressed satisfaction over the state of refugees in Bangladesh, saying it was among countries having the “best practices”.

However, becoming a refugee hosting country in 1992 by accepting Rohingyas, Bangladesh still has no mechanism to process asylum applications, said UNHCR Representative in Bangladesh Stina Ljungdell, offering to provide assistance in this regard.

At a briefing in a hotel in the capital on UNHCR's activities here in the last three years, she also pointed out that though party to major human rights instruments, Bangladesh has neither ratified The 1951 Refugee Convention nor the subsequent 1967 Protocol.

“A country that produced 10 million refugees during the 1971 war time is now host to thousands of refugees from Myanmar,” said Ljungdell, adding that this was a historically proven fact.

She also commended the 2008 High Court decision to grant citizenship to Biharis.

Listing developments during September 2013-June 2016, she said some 32,984 documented Rohingyas were living in two Cox's Bazar camps and another 3 to 5 lakh undocumented ones outside.

Ljungdell applauded a joint database of the government and UNHCR which became effective from June 2014 and removed discrepancies. She also talked about the urgent need to provide legal status and access to justice to refugees.

On the introduction of secondary level informal education at the two camps from January 2014, she urged providing formal education and certificates. She also mentioned that policewomen were deployed inside the camps from September 2014.

Ljungdell said the government has so far issued 343 birth certificates to children born to registered Rohingyas in Bangladesh since March 2015, stating they were Myanmar citizens.

Another 1,000 have been issued to those born since 1992 and there are 18,564 more requiring it, she said. She pointed out the plight 1,237 persons who have been excluded as one of their parents was either a Bangladeshi or undocumented.

The prime minister's Adviser HT Imam and Bangladesh Liberation War Museum Trustee Mofidul Hoque also spoke on Bangladesh's experience with refugee and humanitarian situations.

Envoys, high government officials, senior diplomats and civil society representatives were present.