The Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will hold an extraordinary meeting in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, tomorrow on 19 January 2017, upon the request of the Government of Malaysia to discuss the situation of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar. The meeting will discuss genuine steps that the OIC and the international community should take to urge the Myanmar government to allow delivery of humanitarian assistance to Rakhine State, address the root causes of the violence, and widen the scope of dialogue among the groups to ensure the return of the displaced Rohingya population to their homes in safety and dignity. The meeting will also discuss the situation of the more than 120,000 displaced and refugee Muslims within Myanmar. This upcoming ministerial meeting is going to be held against the backdrop of ongoing concerns of the OIC General Secretariat for the situation of the Rohingya Muslims and the continuing violence as well as the stance of the Myanmar government on the situation in Rakhine state. The Islamic groups in New York, Geneva and Brussels had last month held emergency meetings to discuss the ongoing crisis facing the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar. The aim was to identify necessary measures that can be taken as prelude to convening the extraordinary meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers scheduled for Kuala Lumpur. It should also be mentioned that the foreign ministers of the OIC Contact Group on Rohingya Muslims also held their meeting on the sideline of the Council of Foreign Ministers session held in Tashkent last October. The meeting called again on the Government of Myanmar to restore the citizenship of the Rohingya which had been revoked under the 1982 citizenship law.
