More than a 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 officials said, food rations are set to fall in April to about 18 pounds of rice, two pounds of lentils, a liter 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 U.S. 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,” U.N. 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 percent 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.”
At the refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, overcrowded warrens of bamboo and tarp huts on mounds of dirt house more than a 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 United Nations, with the help of the Bangladeshi government and dozens of aid organizations, looks after the needs of the traumatized 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 and severity.
“Cox’s Bazar is ground zero for the impact of budget cuts on people in desperate need,” Mr. Guterres said. “Here it is clear budget reductions are not about numbers on a balance sheet. Funding cuts have dramatic human costs.”
Even at the current food allowance of $12.50 per person, per month, more than 15 percent of the children at the camp are acutely malnourished, according to the United Nations — the highest level recorded since 2017, when hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived after a sharp escalation of violence in Myanmar.
When a funding shortfall slashed the monthly food allowance to $8 in 2023, malnutrition and crime soared. People tried to flee the camp by embarking on dangerous and often fatal boat journeys.
During Mr. Guterres’s visit to the camp, U.N. officials had set up on a table sample food baskets showing what refugees currently get at $12.50 per person, and what that will be slashed to next month if, as they now project, the allotment falls to $6, barring a last-minute rescue.
Pointing to the sparse basket marked “$6,” Dom Scallpelli, the Bangladesh country director for the World Food Program, said, “If you give only this, that is not a survival ration.”
Even the $6 diet expected for the month of April would be made possible only because the United States unfroze its in-kind contribution, agreeing to send shipments of rice, beans, and oil, Mr. Scallpelli said. The cash contributions — the United States provided about $300 million to the Rohingya response last year, a little over half the entire response fund — remain halted.
“If we didn’t even have that, it would have been a total nightmare situation,” Mr. Scallpelli said about the in-kind donations. “At least we are thankful to the U.S. for this.”
Abul Osman, a 23-year-old refugee who arrived at Cox’s Bazar in 2017, said the refugees were already struggling with the bare minimum and the slashing of rations would be devastating for a population with no livelihood options. The Rohingya in Bangladesh are only allowed schooling inside the camp, and are not allowed access to higher education or jobs outside.
Pregnant women and children will suffer the most from dire food shortages, but the resulting mental health crisis will affect everyone, he said.
“It’s a threat to our survival,” he said.
Mr. Guterres was speaking at a Muslim breaking of fast meal, or Iftar, organized by Bangladesh’s government for what officials said were 100,000 Rohingya refugees. He was joined by Bangladesh’s interim leader, the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. The presence of the two leaders was an expression of solidarity with a refugee population that feels largely forgotten and forsaken by the world.
The event itself turned deadly, with at least one refugee man killed and five others injured in the rush of the crowd leading up to the Iftar meal, Mr. Yunus’s office confirmed.
While the immediate focus remains on food, aid officials also worry that the cuts are affecting every part of the humanitarian response.
The camp, a severely congested collection of shelters, remains deeply vulnerable to fires, disease and flooding.
Sumbul Rizvi, the Bangladesh country head for the U.N.’s refugee agency, said every year, ahead of the monsoon downpours that typically start in June, agencies bolster the slopes most vulnerable to mudslides with bamboo. Up to half of the shelters require fixing and renovation to counter the extreme weather.
This year, because of the aid freeze, all that has been upended.
“I dread to think what is going to happen in the monsoon — or even a cyclone just passing us,” Ms. Rizvi said.
