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Officials overseeing Rohingya issues and community leaders fear a surge in crimes in and around the camps at Ukhiya and Teknaf in Cox’s Bazar because of UN food aid cut.

Rohingyas largely depend on the food ration provided by the UN’s World Food Programme as they have a small scope to go outside the camps and earn money to ensure food and other necessities for their family members, they said.

The UN food ration cut would impact their need for food negatively and, as a result, they would try to go outside their camps illegally to earn money and might be resisted by the law enforcement agencies and the members of the host community.

As a result, they feared, the Rohingyas would be compelled to be involved in different crimes like theft, robberies, drug smuggling and snatching to get money to meet their demands for food and other necessities.

The United Nations World Food Programme on March 7 warned of a critical funding shortfall for its emergency response operations in Bangladesh, jeopardising food assistance for over one million displaced Rohingya people in the host country.

A WFP press release on the day said that the monthly food rations must be halved to $6 per person, down from $12.50 per person.

The decision will be effective from April 1, officials said.

‘We have already expressed our concern to the camp in-charge and other stakeholders about the impact of the food ration cut for Rohingya people. The crimes like theft, robberies and snatching will increase in the area in the coming days due to the cut,’ Mohamamd Habib, the head majhi of camp 15 of Palongkhali union under Ukhiya upazila, told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·.

A head majhi is the top leader of Rohingya community of a particular camp or area.

‘Rohingya people are now getting Tk 1,530 each and the amount will come down to Tk 728. The reduced amount is too low to meet one’s food demand amid high prices of essentials,’ Habib said.

Ata Ullah, a Rohingya community member now sheltered in the camp-1 at Kutupalang since 2017, said that only one in every 20 Rohingyas would be able to manage the needed money staying in the camp by doing business and working as labourers on a daily basis.

‘Most of the people will be hit hard due to the fund cut,’ Ata said.

The Office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner chief   Mohammed Mizanur Rahman also feared the possibility of increasing crimes in the area due to the food aid cut.

‘A hungry man is an angry man. If they don’t get food, the crimes, including thefts, yaba smuggling and robberies will increase as they don’t have enough scope to earn their livelihood,’ said Mizan.

He said that the food cut for Rohingyas would increase pressure on the Bangladesh government.

14th Armed Police Battalion commanding officer Siraj Amin, also an additional deputy inspector general of police, also feared that many Rohingyas might be involved in thefts, robberies, snatching and other criminal activities due to the food ration cut.

‘We are not allowing any Rohingya community member to go outside the camp. Some of them, however, use the periphery route of the camps to go outside as many parts of the peripheries don’t have barbed wire fence,’ he said.

The international community must urgently step up and deliver the necessary support to avoid the devastating impact on the lives of Rohingyas in Bangladesh following the announcement of severe aid cuts by the WFP, Amnesty International said in a statement on Thursday ahead of the visit of UN secretary general Antonio Guterres.

Interviews recently conducted by Amnesty International with Rohingyas show how the community people is bracing for the extreme impact of the deep cuts in WFP funding for about one million Rohingyas in Bangladesh from next month, the statement said.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the interim government has continued efforts to send back Rohingyas to their homeland Myanmar without any progress, with the number of displaced people sheltered in Bangladesh camps now standing at 1.3 million.

Against the backdrop, UN secretary general António Guterres arrived in Dhaka Thursday afternoon on a four-day visit to Bangladesh.

Chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus and António Guterres will visit Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar today and join an Iftar party with about 1,00,000 Rohingyas at a camp to be arranged on behalf of the chief adviser.

‘It is not only an iftar but also expressing solidarity with the UN secretary general and the chief adviser,’ Mizan added.   

In the beginning of 2025, UNICEF estimated that 14,200 children in the Rohingya refugee camps would suffer from severe acute malnutrition in 2025, said a UNICEF press release. 

Declining food rations, poor diets for children or other factors affecting the supply of safe water and health services in the camps could cause this number to rise significantly, it said. 

‘For now, we can provide the services that Rohingya mothers come seeking, and that very sick children need, but as needs keep rising and funding declines, families are telling us they are terrified of what will happen to their babies if there are further food ration cuts and if lifesaving nutrition treatment services stop,’ said UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh, Rana Flowers.

In Cox’s Bazar, where over one million Rohingya refugees including over 5,00,000 children live in the world’s largest refugee settlement, families are facing emergency levels of malnutrition.

Over 15 per cent of children in the camps are now malnourished – the highest levels recorded since the mass displacement of Rohingya refugees in 2017.

Myanmar’s military regime and international communities, including the United Nations Refugee Agency, have generally been blamed for the failure to send back Rohingya people to Myanmar since the large-scale exodus that began in August 2017, amid a military crackdown on the persecuted community in the Rakhine state of Myanmar.

The number of Rohingyas sheltered in Bangladesh camps is increasing with average new births of 30,000 every year.

The government data shows that, out of the total Rohingya people sheltered in Bangladesh camps, 10,05,520 are registered.

Rohingya people are still entering Bangladesh from Mymanmar’s conflict-hit state of Rakhine illegally by paying money to boatmen and brokers on both sides of the border.

A total of 53,948 Rohingyas received temporary joint registration from the RRRC and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2024.

In January this year, 116 Rohingyas were registered and 40 other Rohingyas were registered in February in 2025.   

There are 34 camps for Rohingyas in Ukhiya and Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char in Noakhali, RRRC officials said.

Border Guard Bangladesh officials, however, said that they had sent back over 15,000 Rohingyas from borders in Ukhiya and Teknaf from May 2024 to February 2025.