Yangon - A year after sectarian violence erupted in Myanmar's Rakhine state, some 140,000 people remain in camps with little hope of returning home, United Nations sources said Tuesday.
Fighting between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya communities broke out in the northern townships of Rakhine state in mid-June 2012, sparked by the alleged rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by three Muslims.
The violence claimed up to 167 lives, destroyed 10,000 buildings and ultimately displaced 140,000 people, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
"The government recognises only 125,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons), whereas in fact, according to our estimates, the actual figure is 139,453," said OCHA spokesman Jamie Munn, based in the Rakhine State's capital of Sittwe, 500 kilometres north-west of Yangon.
According to the OCHA's figures, up to 8,000 Rohingyas have fled their homes since February for temporary camps "as a result of the conflict, increased security concerns and lack of access to livelihood and education."
The government, with international aid assistance, has built housing for over 71,000 of the displaced people and will accommodate another 62,000 by the end of July, Munn said.
International aid groups have pressed the government to pursue a long-term solution to the Rohingya issue by granting them citizenship and improving living conditions in their villages.
Legislation passed in 1982 deprived the Rohingya ethnic minority of Myanmar nationality and the right to own property, despite claims by many that their families had lived in the Rakhine State for generations.
"The consequences of statelessness for Muslims in the Rakhine State continue to have a direct effect on the fundamental human rights, and social and economic development of Myanmar," said Ashok Nigam, UN humanitarian coordinator for Myanmar.
There are an estimated 800,000 stateless Roghingya in the Rakhine State.
The Myanmar government views the Rohingya as the descendents of Bengali migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, who were brought to the Rakhine by British colonialists to develop the area as an agricultural base for exports to India and the Middle East.
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