Hunger, disease loom for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh amid Trump's aid cuts: UN
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi says the Trump administration’s decision to terminate foreign aid budgets would put thousands of persecuted Rohingya Muslim refugees, currently sheltering in southeastern Bangladesh, in hunger and insecurity.
Bangladesh has been hosting more than one million Rohingya in the southeastern Cox’s Bazar district since the Muslim community fled their homes in Myanmar following a military-led genocide in 2017.
The Muslim-minority Rohingya community mostly depends on foreign aid as they do not have access to employment in the world's largest and congested refugee camps.
The US is the largest donor of humanitarian aid for the Rohingya refugees. Last year, it contributed $301 million, or 55 percent of all foreign aid, for more than 1.3 million Rohingya living in camps in Cox’s Bazar.
The aid is feared to stop soon as President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid in January to conduct a sweeping review to ensure that all the projects were aligned with his "America First" policy.
Grandi, who visited the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar on Friday, said in a post on X after the visit that the possible aid cut will put “thousands at risk of hunger, disease and insecurity.”
Currently 1.3 million Rohingya Muslim refugees are cramped inside 33 camps in Cox’s Bazar — the world’s largest refugee settlement.
According to Bangladesh health officials, several hospitals in the camps would be forced to close if no funding was available by the end of March.
The health care crisis would be further exacerbated by limited access to food in the settlements, where the majority of refugees are already malnourished.
Rights groups also warned that even if Washington’s aid cuts continue for a year, the humanitarian losses could be irreparable.
Muhammad Yunus, head of Bangladesh's transitional government, also warned earlier this month in a meeting with US officials in the capital Dhaka that Washington’s funding is the most crucial aid to Rohingya refugees.
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