By Sudipto Ganguly
DHAKA (Reuters) – The United Nations will increase the food ration for each Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh by $2 a month, to $10 from Jan. 1, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday, as it thanked donors for coming to the rescue of a cash-strapped effort.
The United Nations had cut food aid last year to the refugees by a third, to $8 each every month, as it had raised less than half of the $876 million required to support them.
Nearly a million members of the Muslim minority from Myanmar live in bamboo-and-plastic camps in Bangladesh’s border district of Cox’s Bazar, most of them having fled a military crackdown in 2017.
The WFP cut the refugees’ food entitlement to $10 from $12 in March, and further in June, to stand at $8 each a month, in the wake of a severe funding crunch.
“The rapid deterioration of the food and nutrition situation in the camps is extremely worrying,” Dom Scalpelli, the agency’s director in Bangladesh, said in a statement.
“Through all this, the donor community stood with the Rohingya – it’s all thanks to its generous contributions we can now have this increase and also add locally fortified rice to WFP’s food assistance package.”
(Additional reporting by Ruma Paul; editing by Christian Schmollinger)
