The meager rations the United Nations says it will be able to supply for each refugee in the camp in April, with the allowance set to drop to $6, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on Friday. (Photo: New York Times)
COX’S BAZAR — More than 1 million people in the world’s largest refugee camp could soon be left with too little food for survival.
In the camp in Bangladesh, United Nations (UN) officials said, food rations are set to fall in April to about 18 pounds of rice, 2 pounds of lentils, a litre of cooking oil and a fistful of salt, per person — for the entire month.
The Trump administration’s freeze on aid has overwhelmed humanitarian response at a time when multiple conflicts rage, with aid agencies working feverishly to fill the void left by the US government, their most generous and reliable donor. Many European nations are also cutting humanitarian aid, as they focus on increasing military spending in the face of an emboldened Russia.
The world is left teetering on “the verge of a deep humanitarian crisis,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned on a visit to the Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh on Friday.
“With the announced cuts in financial assistance, we are facing the dramatic risk of having only 40% in 2025 of the resources available for humanitarian aid in 2024,” he said, addressing a crowd of tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees. “That would be an unmitigated disaster. People will suffer, and people will die.”
Rohingya refugees hold placards while attending a Ramadan Solidarity Iftar to have an Iftar meal with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Muhammad Yunus, Chief Adviser of Bangladesh Interim Government, at the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on Friday. (Photo: Reuters)
At the refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, overcrowded warrens of bamboo and tarp huts on mounds of dirt house more than 1 million Rohingya people driven from their homeland, Myanmar, by a campaign of ethnic cleansing that intensified in 2017.
Fenced off from the rest of Bangladesh, and almost entirely cut off from opportunities to find work or integrate into the country, the Rohingya refugees remain entirely at the mercy of humanitarian aid. The UN, with the help of the Bangladeshi government and dozens of aid organisations, looks after the needs of the traumatised people — education, water, sanitation, nutrition, medical care and much more.
The sudden drop in humanitarian aid threatens a wide range of programs and communities around the world, but the plight of the Rohingya is unusual in its scale
Read More