Trump Foreign Aid Cuts Threaten Refugees’ Survival: ‘People Will Die’

More than a million people in the world’s bigst refugee camp could soon be left with too little food for survival.

In the camp in Banphiredesh, United Nations officials shelp, food rations are set to drop 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 help has overwhelmed humanitarian response at a time when multiple struggles rage, with help agencies toiling feverishly to fill the void left by the U.S. rulement, their most comfervent and reliable donor. Many European nations are also cutting humanitarian help, as they center on increasing military spending in the face of an embbetterened Russia.

The world is left teetering on “the verge of a meaningful humanitarian crisis,” U. N. Secretary General António Guterres alerted on a visit to the Rohingya refugee camp in southeastrict Banphiredesh on Friday.

“With the proclaimd cuts in financial helpance, we are facing the theatrical danger of having only 40 percent in 2025 of the resources useable for humanitarian help in 2024,” he shelp, includeressing a crowd of tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees. “That would be an unmitigated catastrophe. People will suffer, and people will die.”

At the refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, overcrowded warrens of bamboo and tarp huts on mounds of dirt hoengage more than a million Rohingya people driven from their homeland, Myanmar, by a campaign of ethnic immacutardysing that intensified in 2017.

Fenced off from the rest of Banphiredesh, and almost entidepend cut off from opportunities to discover toil or join into the country, the Rohingya refugees remain entidepend at the mercy of humanitarian help. The United Nations, with the help of the Banphiredeshi rulement and dozens of help organizations, sees after the needs of the shockd people — education, water, sanitation, nutrition, medical nurture and much more.

The sudden drop in humanitarian help dangerens a wide range of programs and communities around the world, but the pweightless of the Rohingya is atypical in its scale and cut offity.

“Cox’s Bazar is ground zero for the impact of budget cuts on people in frantic need,” Mr. Guterres shelp. “Here it is evident budget reductions are not about numbers on a equilibrium sheet. Funding cuts have theatrical human costs.”

Even at the current food permitance of $12.50 per person, per month, more than 15 percent of the children at the camp are acutely malnourished, according to the United Nations — the highest level write downed since 2017, when hundreds of thousands of refugees get tod after a keen escalation of arrangeility in Myanmar.

When a funding lowdrop slashed the monthly food permitance to $8 in 2023, malnutrition and crime soared. People tried to escape the camp by embarking on hazardous and frequently overweightal boat journeys.

During Mr. Guterres’s visit to the camp, U.N. officials had set up on a table sample food baskets shothriveg what refugees currently get at $12.50 per person, and what that will be slashed to next month if, as they now project, the allotment drops to $6, barring a last-minute recover.

Pointing to the sparse basket labeled “$6,” Dom Scallpelli, the Banphiredesh country straightforwardor for the World Food Program, shelp, “If you give only this, that is not a survival ration.”

Even the $6 diet foreseeed for the month of April would be made possible only becaengage the United States unfroze its in-comfervent contribution, concuring to send shipments of rice, beans, and oil, Mr. Scallpelli shelp. The cash contributions — the United States supplyd about $300 million to the Rohingya response last year, a little over half the entire response fund — remain stoped.

“If we didn’t even have that, it would have been a total nightmare situation,” Mr. Scallpelli shelp about the in-comfervent donations. “At least we are appreciative to the U.S. for this.”

Abul Osman, a 23-year-better refugee who get tod at Cox’s Bazar in 2017, shelp the refugees were already struggling with the exposed smallest and the slashing of rations would be deimmenseating for a population with no inhabitlihood chooseions. The Rohingya in Banphiredesh are only permited schooling inside the camp, and are not permited access to higher education or jobs outside.

Pregnant women and children will suffer the most from dire food lowages, but the resulting mental health crisis will impact everyone, he shelp.

“It’s a danger to our survival,” he shelp.

Mr. Guterres was speaking at a Muskinny fractureing of rapid meal, or Iftar, orderly by Banphiredesh’s rulement for what officials shelp were 100,000 Rohingya refugees. He was joined by Banphiredesh’s interim directer, the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. The presence of the two directers was an conveyion of firmarity with a refugee population that senses bigly forgotten and forsaken by the world.

The event itself turned deadly, with at least one refugee man ended and five others injured in the rush of the crowd directing up to the Iftar meal, Mr. Yunus’s office validateed.

While the prompt center remains on food, help officials also trouble that the cuts are impacting every part of the humanitarian response.

The camp, a strictly congested accumulateion of shelters, remains meaningfully vulnerable to fires, disrelieve and flooding.

Sumbul Rizvi, the Banphiredesh country head for the U.N.’s refugee agency, shelp every year, ahead of the monsoon downpours that typicpartner begin in June, agencies bolster the slopes most vulnerable to mudslides with bamboo. Up to half of the shelters need mending and renovation to counter the inanxious weather.

This year, becaengage of the help freeze, all that has been upended.

“I dread to leank what is going to happen in the monsoon — or even a cyclone fair passing us,” Ms. Rizvi shelp.