In Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar refugee settlements, child malnutrition has surged and cuts to aid funding risk creating a humanitarian "catastrophe", the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday.
"Children in the world's largest refugee camp are experiencing the worst levels of malnutrition since the massive displacement that occurred in 2017," 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.
Speaking from Dhaka, Ms. Flowers said that last month in the camps in Cox's 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.
Preventable deaths
"Unless additional resources are secured, only half of the children in need will have access to treatment this year, and that's going to leave about 7,000 children at risk, with the expectation of a rise in morbidity and mortality," Ms. Flowers said. "That's babies dying."
Bangladesh hosts more than one million stateless Rohingya driven from their homes in neighbouring Myanmar over the course of several years following the brutal military crackdown in 2017. Some 500,000 Rohingya refugee children live in the camps of Cox's Bazar.
The UNICEF representative highlighted several "compounding crises" that are driving the surge in malnutrition. Among them was last year's 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.
Now, the global aid funding crisis has refugee families on the brink of "extreme desperation".
"Food rations have reached a critical point," Ms. Flowers said. "According 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."
She stressed that pregnant and breastfeeding mothers along with their infants would be among the most vulnerable.
Myanmar still not safe
The UNICEF representative insisted that these families "cannot yet safely return home" to Myanmar. Just 10 days ago in a briefing to the UN Human Rights Council , High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said that the country is mired in one of the world's worst human rights crises. He denounced the Myanmar military's "campaign of terrorizing the population through acts of extreme brutality".
The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh also have no legal right to work, Ms. Flowers said, which makes them reliant on aid.
"The sustained humanitarian support, it's not optional. It is essential," she insisted.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is set to travel to Bangladesh later this week and meet with Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar, as part of his annual Ramadan solidarity visit.
Funding freeze
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.
"That 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," Ms. Flowers said.
She stressed that funding for the agency's detection and treatment services for child malnutrition will run out in June 2025.
The US State Department announced on Monday that some 80 per cent of the US Agency for International Development's (USAID) programmes would be ending.
Ms. Flowers added that "other US grants for Bangladesh have been terminated", representing about a quarter of UNICEF's Rohingya refugee response costs.
Without the funding, "services for these children will be significantly scaled back, putting their survival, safety and futures at risk", she said.
Parts of the humanitarian response that are in jeopardy include safe water and sanitation services, which "will deteriorate, increasing the risk of deadly disease outbreaks with flow-on effects for the public health security," Ms. Flowers warned. Health access will shrink, "clinics will close and immunizations will be disrupted", she said.
"Education will be cut off, leaving hundreds of thousands without learning opportunities. And that's without hope," she concluded.
