Refugees from the Rohingya Muslim minority in Bangladesh are receiving less cash assistance to buy food due to difficulties financing the World Food Program (WFP), the UN agency announced on Friday.
This cut in aid to the Rohingya people living in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, comes at a particularly critical time, following Cyclone Mocha’s devastating sweep across Bangladesh and Myanmar (formerly Burma).
In the last two months, food vouchers have gone from 12 dollars (11.1 euros) to only 8 dollars (7.4 euros), which is less than nine cents per meal, well below the minimum threshold to guarantee the security of feeding hundreds of thousands of people.
Although the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp was spared from the direct hit of the cyclone, the storm’s strong winds caused extensive material damage to the fragile shelters of the refugees.
“Anything that is less than 12 dollars will have a direct consequence not only for the food of women and children, but also for the safety of all those who are in these camps,” warned the director of the WFP, Monsignor Scalpelli.
The UN system agency recalled that in the Cox’s Bazar camp, before this new cut, there were almost a million refugees from the Rohingya minority – who left Myanmar to escape persecution by the Burmese authorities – who were totally dependent on humanitarian aid to survive.
In Cox’s Bazar, at least four in ten families eat the bare minimum to survive, and one in ten children suffers from acute malnutrition.
Lack of food security forces families to take children out of school to work in illegal businesses, increasing tension with host country communities, and girls into forced marriages.
To deal with the current situation, the WFP is asking for an amount in the order of 56 million dollars (about 52 million euros) so that the refugees can once again receive full food and so that “this vital channel of aid is maintained until the end”. of the year,” added Scalpelli.
The official also stressed that the WFP-coordinated relief operation is “the only reliable source of food for Rohingya refugees.”
Source: TSF
