‘Deeper into hunger’: UN to halve food aid for Rohingya in Bangladesh

The United Nations food agency said it would reduce aid for monthly rations for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by more than half – to U.S. $6  per person, amid a funds shortage – with one NGO saying that an adult required at least 10 times that amount. 

The U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) said Friday that this reduction for the more than 1 million refugees from Myanmar's persecuted mostly-Muslim minority would be “pushing them deeper into hunger” and could cause a potential humanitarian catastrophe.

WFP said that if it did not get more funds, the cut – down from $12.50 – would be implemented starting April 1. That falls around Eid al-Fitr, when Muslims celebrate after a month of fasting during Ramadan.

Dom Scalpelli, WFP’s Bangladesh director, said the Rohingya refugees depend entirely on humanitarian aid for their survival.

“These families have nowhere else to go, and WFP’s food aid is the difference between survival and despair,” he was quoted as saying in a WFP statement Friday.

“Any reduction in food assistance will push them deeper into hunger and force them to resort to desperate measures just to survive,” the statement added.

The U.N. food agency said that to avoid cutting food aid for Rohingya, it would need $15 million in funds for April and $81 million until the end of 2025.

“Anything less would fall below the minimum survival level and fail to meet basic dietary needs,” the WFP said in a statement issued on March 3. 

Abu Morshed Chowdhury, executive director of an NGO called Pulse Bangladesh, said that $6 was very low.

“Each person needs at least $58 (7,000 taka) per month to survive,” he told BenarNews.

He added that the drop would put children and pregnant women at grave risk.

When first announcing the possible cuts, the WFP said on Wednesday that “due to severe funding shortfalls, WFP is once again at risk of reducing food assistance for the Rohingya refugees.”

“Immediate support is urgently needed to prevent this crisis from escalating further,” Scalpelli said.

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Two years ago, when a similar cut had reduced food aid to $8 a month per person, 15% of the refugee children in the camps suffered from malnutrition and 90% of the camps’ population  “struggled to access an adequate diet,” the World Food Program said.  

That rate of malnutrition had been the worst since 2017 when the WFP began providing food and other assistance to refugees who have settled in the camps in and around Cox’s Bazar, a southeastern Bangladeshi district near the Myanmar border.

They receive food assistance through vouchers that allow families to buy food items at WFP outlets throughout the camps.

The WFP said it feared further cuts would also be a danger to the safety of the Rohingya.

“For a population with no legal status, no freedom of movement outside the camps, and no sustainable livelihood opportunities, further cuts will exacerbate protection and security risks,” the U.N. food agency’s statement said.

“As in 2023, women and girls, in particular, may face heightened risks of exploitation, trafficking, prostitution, and domestic violence. Children may be pulled out of school and forced into child labor, while girls may be married off at a young age as families resort to desperate measures to survive.”

“The Rohingya refugee crisis remains one of the world’s largest and most protracted,” Scalpelli, the WFP Bangladesh director, said.

One Rohingya refugee from Ukhia sub-district in Cox’s Bazar, 60-year-old Sala Uddin told BenarNews he was extremely worried for his family of seven people.

“[I]f we get only half [the current aid], we won’t even have enough rice,” he told BenarNews.

Another refugee Muhammed Jubair, who is president of a Rohingya NGO called Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, said that he had done the math and the situation would be grim if food aid dropped to half the current amount.

 “I have calculated that with the [reduced] money it would be difficult for a Rohingya person to survive,” he told BenarNews.

“How can a person function with so little?”