DHAKA, 20 August 2021, (TON): At least 218 Rohingyas died or went missing at sea in 2020, as they desperately sought refuge in Southeast Asian countries -- either from Myanmar's Rakhine state or Bangladesh's Rohingya camps, a new UN report says.

According to the report of the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, released “they are part of 2,413 Rohingyas who are known to have travelled last year, making it the deadliest year on record for refugee journeys in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea since the region's "boat crisis" in 2015.”

"This means that journeys were 8 times deadlier in 2020 than those in 2019," according to the report titled "Left Adrift at Sea: Dangerous Journeys of Refugees Across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea".

It also highlights that some two-thirds of those attempting these perilous voyages were women and children in contrast to earlier periods where most of those travelling were men.

UNHCR says these deadly journeys of the Rohingyas are not a new phenomenon. Over the past decade, thousands of Rohingya refugees have left by sea from Rakhine state in Myanmar and from the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar.

"The roots of these dangerous journeys are found in Myanmar, where the Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship and denied basic rights."

Bangladesh hosts nearly a million Rohingyas, mostly those who fled a brutal military campaign in 2017. Back in Rakhine State, there are some six lakh Rohingyas.