A delegation of the United Nations will visit Bhasan Char island- the new site that the Bangladesh government has developed for the relocation of around 100,000 Rohingya refugees- in Bangladesh for assessing the facilities there. 

The UN and several western aid agencies had earlier raised concern, saying the island is not safe, but the Bangladesh government went ahead with the plan and has already shifted around 13,000 refugees from the crowded camps of Cox Bazaar. 

“The UN has agreed to undertake its first mission to Bhasan Char at the earliest possible date," Mostafa Mohammad Sazzad Hossain, communications officer at the UN Refugee Agency in Dhaka, told The Daily Star.

"The UN is in discussions with the government about finalizing all details of the visit," he said.

For more than a year, the government and UN bodies spared over the technical assessment of the new facilities. The break came this week after a meeting between the heads of some UN missions in Dhaka and Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Mahsud Bin Momen.  

The reason for the relocation that the Bangladesh government gave is the overcrowding in the existing camps in Cox Bazar which are fueling crimes, illegal gangs, and several cases of gender violence. 

Currently, the country houses around 1.1 million Rohingya refugees who had fled Myanmar after the Myanmar military cracked down in the western Rakhine state.