{"id":54278,"date":"2025-03-11T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=54278"},"modified":"2025-03-11T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T20:00:00","slug":"bangladesh-rohingya-childrens-acute-hunger-surges-amid-funding-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=54278","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh: Rohingya children\u2019s acute hunger surges amid funding cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cChildren in the world&#8217;s largest refugee camp are experiencing the worst levels of malnutrition since the massive displacement that occurred in 2017,\u201d Rana Flowers, UNICEF representative in Bangladesh, told journalists in Geneva, almost eight years since hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya fled widespread military attacks in Myanmar.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking from Dhaka, Ms. Flowers said that last month in the camps in Cox\u2019s Bazar, admissions for severe acute malnutrition surged by over 27 per cent compared to February 2024, with more than 38 children under five admitted for emergency care every day.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Preventable deaths<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>\u201cUnless additional resources are secured, only half of the children in need will have access to treatment this year, and that&#8217;s going to leave about 7,000 children at risk, with the expectation of a rise in morbidity and mortality,\u201d Ms. Flowers said. \u201cThat\u2019s babies dying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bangladesh hosts more than one million stateless Rohingya driven from their homes in neighbouring Myanmar over the course of several years following the\u00a0 brutal military crackdown in 2017. Some 500,000 Rohingya refugee children live in the camps of Cox&#8217;s Bazar.<\/p>\n<p>The UNICEF representative highlighted several \u201ccompounding crises\u201d that are driving the surge in malnutrition. Among them was last year\u2019s unusually long monsoon season, which exacerbated the unsanitary conditions in the camps, bringing on severe diarrhoea in children and outbreaks of cholera and dengue. Violence over the border in Myanmar triggered more displacement while food rations dwindled.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the global aid funding crisis has refugee families on the brink of \u201cextreme desperation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFood rations have reached a critical point,\u201d Ms. Flowers said. \u201cAccording to the World Food Programme, without immediate funding, rations could soon be reduced to less than half just $6 a month, an amount that falls drastically short of basic nutritional needs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She stressed that pregnant and breastfeeding mothers along with their infants would be among the most vulnerable.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Myanmar still not safe<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The UNICEF representative insisted that these families \u201ccannot yet safely return home\u201d to Myanmar. Just 10 days ago in a briefing to the UN Human Rights Council, High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker T\u00fcrk said that the country is mired in one of the world\u2019s worst human rights crises. He denounced the Myanmar military\u2019s \u201ccampaign of terrorizing the population through acts of extreme brutality\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh also have no legal right to work, Ms. Flowers said, which makes them reliant on aid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe sustained humanitarian support, it&#8217;s not optional. It is essential,\u201d she insisted.<\/p>\n<p>UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres is set to travel to Bangladesh later this week and meet with Rohingya refugees in Cox\u2019s Bazar, as part of his annual Ramadan solidarity visit.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Funding freeze<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Asked about the impact of major cuts in aid funding from the United States, Ms. Flowers said that following the announcement of a US foreign assistance freeze earlier this year, UNICEF received a humanitarian waiver for its nutrition programme.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat may allow us to use the ready-to-use therapeutic food to treat and cure the very sick children with severe acute malnutrition. But we need both waiver and the actual funding to maintain this work,\u201d Ms. Flowers said.<\/p>\n<p>She stressed that funding for the agency\u2019s detection and treatment services for child malnutrition will run out in June 2025.<\/p>\n<p>The US State Department announced on Monday that some 80 per cent of the US Agency for International Development&#8217;s (USAID) programmes would be ending.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Flowers added that \u201cother US grants for Bangladesh have been terminated\u201d, representing about a quarter of UNICEF\u2019s Rohingya refugee response costs.<\/p>\n<p>Without the funding, \u201cservices for these children will be significantly scaled back, putting their survival, safety and futures at risk\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n<p>Parts of the humanitarian response that are in jeopardy include safe water and sanitation services, which \u201cwill deteriorate, increasing the risk of deadly disease outbreaks with flow-on effects for the public health security,\u201d Ms. Flowers warned. Health access will shrink, \u201cclinics will close and immunizations will be disrupted\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEducation will be cut off, leaving hundreds of thousands without learning opportunities. And that&#8217;s without hope,\u201d she concluded.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/feed\/view\/en\/story\/2025\/03\/1160986\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cChildren in the world&#8217;s largest refugee camp are experiencing the worst levels of malnutrition since the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v28.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Bangladesh: Rohingya children\u2019s acute hunger surges amid funding cuts - Gulf Times | News by the minute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gulf Times: Latest news across the GCC from UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/feed\/view\/en\/story\/2025\/03\/1160986\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bangladesh: Rohingya children\u2019s acute hunger surges amid funding cuts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gulf News| UAE&#039;s Largest News aggregator site\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/feed\/view\/en\/story\/2025\/03\/1160986\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gulf Times | News by the minute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/100084981843786\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-03-11T20:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/1741705119_image560x340cropped.avif\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"340\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bangladesh: Rohingya children\u2019s acute hunger surges amid funding cuts - 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