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Indonesia, Malaysia to Temporarily House Migrants

CBN

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Indonesia and Malaysia have agreed to give temporary shelter to thousands of migrants stranded at sea.

The agreement is the first breakthrough in the humanitarian crisis confronting Southeast Asia.

The deal comes after weeks of reluctance by the region's nations to take responsibility for the crisis. A search and rescue agreement is now needed to find all the boats still lost at sea.

"These boats have got to be found," Joe Lowry, from the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, told reporters.

"There's a huge body of water and only a small number of boats, and the more time that goes on without good search and rescue, the more desperate their conditions are going to become," he warned.

Most of the migrants are said to be from a long-persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar and others are Bangladeshis fleeing poverty.

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