The United Nations warned Tuesday that Myanmar's humanitarian crisis is deteriorating, drawing parallels to the 2017 atrocities against the Rohingya minority that some nations have labeled genocide.
Rakhine State has been blockaded by Myanmar's military as it battles ethnic fighters in a many-sided civil war that has consumed the country since the junta toppled the democratic government in a 2021 coup.
U.N. rights chief Volker Türk warned that both the military and local ethnic fighters from the Arakan Army "have acted with near complete impunity, enabling the recurrence of violations in an endless cycle of suffering for the civilian population."
"Videos and pictures show death, destruction and desperation, distressingly similar to images that we already saw during the 2017 atrocities committed by the military against the Rohingya" minority, he said in a statement.
"It pains me deeply to see the same happening again," he said, reiterating his call for the U.N. Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
