World Food Programme reports ‘severe funding shortfalls’ that will compel a reduction of monthly food vouchers from $12.50 to $6 per individual. The United Nations has announced that it will be compelled to reduce rations for nearly a million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by half beginning next month because of a shortage of money.
The World Food Programme (WFP) stated in a letter on Wednesday that “severe funding shortfalls” were compelling a reduction in monthly food vouchers from $12.50 to $6 per individual. Unfortunately, we have not yet received adequate funds, and budget-cutting measures alone are not sufficient,” the letter added.
Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s highest-ranking official in charge of Rohingya refugee camps, confirmed cutting the aid. I got the letter of the $6.50 reduction, which will be effective from April 1,” the Bangladesh refugee relief and repatriation commissioner said.
“What they are getting now is already insufficient, so it’s difficult to imagine the impact of this new reduction,” he said in a phone call to the Reuters news agency.
The WFP news follows a visit by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, which is scheduled later this month to see Rohingya refugees to commemorate the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Bangladesh is hosting over one million Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority who escaped violent cleansing in neighbouring Myanmar primarily in 2016 and 2017. They are living in squalid camps in the Cox’s Bazar district in the south, where they have very limited access to employment and schooling.
