ISLAMABAD: Rohingya refugee mothers sheltering in Bangladeshi camps are fearing hunger and health problems for their already malnourished children as the World Food Program (WFP) will further decrease their rations in June — after already reducing them earlier this year.
The WFP said earlier this week that a lack of funding would force it to reduce food aid for nearly one million Rohingya starting 1 June. This will be the second time in just three months that the WFP reduces food aid for the refugees living in Bangladesh. With the new reductions in place, the value of food aid will be reduced from 12 to 8 dollars, or more than 33% since March.
Many Rohingya families, particularly those where moms are the sole breadwinners, are wholly dependent on aid.
Malnutrition is already a big issue in the cramped refugee camps, where international assistance for the Rohingya has been falling since 2020.
The rations currently given to the Rohingya are already insufficient and further slashes would pose serious health issues for the refugee population. Before the first reductions, UN special rapporteurs warned that the refugees in Bangladesh were food insecure, with over a third of kids stunted and underweight.
Bangladesh is not a signatory country to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and the Rohingya refugees it is hosting cannot be lawfully employed to earn their bread.
Supporting the refugees already costs the country an estimated 1.2 billion dollars a year — a sum the developing Bangladesh also struggles to afford.
Current ration also insufficient
The current monthly WFP food assistance is insufficient for the unfortunate refugees to survive even half a month.
A 30-year-old homemaker Shekutara Begum said that the aid she receives from the UN agency is sufficient to run the food expenses for ten days out of the month.
She feared that continuous and worsening deprivation would affect the new generation of Rohingya growing up in Bangladeshi Cox’s Bazar, increasing child labour and their future involvement in criminal activities.
