Trump Foreign Aid Cuts Threaten Refugees’ Survival: ‘People Will Die’
Asia Pacific|‘People Will Die’: Trump Aid Cuts Threaten Refugees’ Survival, U.N. Says
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/world/asia/trump-aid-cuts-refugees-rohingya.html
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At the world’s largest refugee camp, for Rohingya people in Bangladesh, the food allowance per person is set to fall to just $6 per month, far below what aid officials say is required for survival.
By Mujib Mashal
Reporting from the Rohingya refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
More than a million people in the world’s largest refugee camp could soon be left with too little food for survival.
In the camp in Bangladesh, United Nations officials said, food rations are set to fall in April to about 18 pounds of rice, two pounds of lentils, a liter of cooking oil and a fistful of salt, per person — for the entire month.
The Trump administration’s freeze on aid has overwhelmed humanitarian response at a time when multiple conflicts rage, with aid agencies working feverishly to fill the void left by the U.S. government, their most generous and reliable donor. Many European nations are also cutting humanitarian aid, as they focus on increasing military spending in the face of an emboldened Russia.
The world is left teetering on “the verge of a deep humanitarian crisis,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned on a visit to the Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh on Friday.
“With the announced cuts in financial assistance, we are facing the dramatic risk of having only 40 percent in 2025 of the resources available for humanitarian aid in 2024,” he said, addressing a crowd of tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees. “That would be an unmitigated disaster. People will suffer, and people will die.”
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