Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/UNITED NATIONS: As food rationing begins for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, a top UN rights official on Thursday asked the international community to come forward to feed the refugees as they face a dire situation of life and death.
UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar
The appeal comes on the heels of the announcement by the Rome-based UN agency, World Food Programme (WFP) that announced to cut aid to the refugees living in the vast Cox’s Bazaar camp from March 1 due to a lack of funding.
According to Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, “these ration cuts are a stain on the international community’s conscience.”
Andrews, who reports independently to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, said that the cuts would affect nearly one million Rohingya refugees who escaped attacks and persecution at the hand of the Myanmar military in 2017.
United Nations humanitarian assistance groups, have already alerted that four out of 10 Rohingya children are stunted in growth. Anemia affects more than half of the children and four out of every 10 pregnant and breastfeeding Rohingya women at the Cox’s Bazaar camp.
The World Food Programme has reported a $125 million funding gap to provide potentially life-saving help to the Rohingyas, whose monthly ration has been reduced from $12 to $10 per person. This money can be used to purchase over 40 dry and fresh food items at WFP outlets throughout the camps.
However, the consequences of the cuts “will be dire,” as other critical services are already dwindling nearly six years into the Rohingya crisis.
Andrews called for immediate assistance from UN member states who had only offered “rhetorical support” to the Rohingyas. “Rohingya families cannot eat political rhetoric,” he said.
Andrews urged UN member states to go beyond empty statements of support and take life-saving action.
“If no additional humanitarian funding is provided, “these cuts will be even deeper over the coming two months, reducing food rations by a third. That would mean that Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh shelters would need to try and survive on $0.27 per day.” He said that the consequences of these new cuts would be disastrous for a population already subjected to enormous suffering.
