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

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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.

A mass of people fills the space between two hillsides.
In a sprawling Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, aid cuts could mean starvation, officials say. Thousands of people there took part in a fast-breaking meal in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on Friday.Credit...Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

Mujib Mashal

By Mujib Mashal

Reporting from the Rohingya refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

March 14, 2025, 4:18 p.m. ET

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.”

Image

Aid cuts will be “an unmitigated disaster,” the U.N. Secretary-General, António Guterres, said at the Rohingya camp on Friday.Credit...Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

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