UN to slash rations to Rohingya refugees by half to 8 per month official says

DHAKA - The United Nations will cut food rations to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh from US$12.50 (S$16.70) to US$6 (S$8) per person per month from April after failing to find funds, an official said, raising fears among aid workers of rising hunger in the world’s largest refugee settlement.

“Yesterday, I was informed verbally, and today I received the letter confirming a US$6.50 cut, which will take effect from April 1,” said Mr Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s top official overseeing the refugee camps.

“What they are receiving now is already not enough, so it’s hard to imagine the consequences of this new cut,” he told Reuters by phone.

A spokesperson for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, did not immediately return a request for comment.

Bangladesh is sheltering more than one million Rohingya, members of a persecuted Muslim minority who fled violent purges in neighbouring Myanmar mostly in 2016 and 2017, in overcrowded camps in the southern Cox’s Bazar district where they have limited access to job opportunities or education.

Roughly 70,000 fled to Bangladesh in 2024, driven in part by growing hunger in their home Rakhine state, Reuters has reported.

In a letter to Mr Rahman, seen by Reuters, the WFP said it had been trying to raise funds to keep the rations at US$12.50 per month but had failed to find donors.

A cut in rations to anything less than US$6 would “fall below the minimum survival level and fail to meet basic dietary needs”, it said.

The WFP said it accepted that “given the refugees’ complete reliance on humanitarian aid”, the cut would strain families struggling to meet basic needs and heighten “increasing tensions within the camps”.

It said it had appealed to multiple donors for funding and that cost-saving measures alone were not