Andrew is enjoying a break this week. I’m Birgit Schwarz, taking care of the Daily Brief today and tomorrow.
It beggars belief that at a time of extreme food price increases, food aid for a group of highly vulnerable people would be cut.
But this is exactly what the UN World Food Program (WFP) has done.
On March 1, just before Ramadan, it will slash monthly food rations for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar by almost 20 per cent, from $12 vouchers to $10. The reason: a US$125 million funding shortfall.
Now, $2 less per month may not seem much for you and me. But for the nearly one million Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, who have largely relied on humanitarian assistance since they fled genocidal attacks on their villages by Myanmar’s army more than five years ago, $2 less a month might mean a meal less a day.
Already, the refugees’ living conditions were precarious, with malnutrition affecting one out of eight children. More than a third have stunted growth as a result and 40 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women are anaemic.
Even before the ration cuts, families had been forced to take out loans to pay for food. Making matters worse is the Bangladesh government’s determination to restrict refugees from seeking paid work.
Now imagine you had to get in debt to eat while being prohibited from seeking an honest income? What would you do to feed your children?
Even WFP fears the consequences of its decision, warning that with “each ration cut, malnutrition will certainly rise. With each ration cut, families will increasingly resort to dangerous strategies to cope.”
But seeing that its pledges for funding for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis received less than half the US$881 million needed for the year, WFP was left with no choice, it says.
Compare this with the billions of dollars that have been pledged in humanitarian aid alone to Ukraine, and you will probably be inclined to share Onno Van Manen’s, Save the Children's country director in Bangladesh, point of view that this “really shows the limits of [the international community’s] commitment to some of the most vulnerable people in the world."