COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh — More than 1.2 million Rohingya refugees living across roughly 30 camps in Cox's Bazar face worsening hunger, reduced access to clean water and shrinking educational opportunities as international aid funding declines, relief organizations warned this week.
Save the Children said 35 percent of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are expected to reach crisis or emergency hunger levels this year. Children comprise more than half the camp population, meaning hundreds of thousands of minors face acute food insecurity.
The United Nations refugee agency warned that declining humanitarian funding will significantly worsen conditions for the 1.2 million Rohingya sheltering in Bangladesh, nearly nine years after they fled attacks and violence in Myanmar. The camps at Cox's Bazar constitute the world's largest refugee settlement.
Global cuts to humanitarian budgets have compounded pre-existing problems. Overcrowded living conditions, limited access to clean water, inadequate nutrition and restricted livelihoods had defined camp life before the current funding decline. The budget reductions have now reduced food rations directly, pushing families already vulnerable below minimum thresholds.
An entire generation of Rohingya children has grown up inside displacement. Many children in the Cox's Bazar camps know no other life, having arrived as infants or been born in the settlement after their families fled Myanmar. Nine years of camp existence has produced a generation with limited formal education and no legal pathway to return home.
Relief groups operating in the camps have linked the deterioration directly to cuts in global humanitarian contributions. Reduced rations lower caloric intake, which accelerates malnutrition in children under five — the group most vulnerable to lasting developmental harm from insufficient nutrition. Aid organizations have not publicly identified a replacement funding source to offset the shortfall.
The Rohingya fled Myanmar in successive waves, with the largest movement occurring in 2017 following a military crackdown that the United Nations and several governments have characterized as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar has not offered a credible repatriation process, leaving the Bangladesh camps as a semi-permanent settlement with no clear resolution in sight.
Bangladesh, one of the world's most densely populated countries, has hosted the refugee population for years under significant domestic strain. The government in Dhaka has repeatedly called for international burden-sharing and has sought resettlement options in third countries, with limited results. The continued presence of 1.2 million refugees in a narrow coastal district has strained local resources, land and labor markets.
Conditions inside the camps have drawn repeated warnings from international bodies. Monsoon flooding, landslide risk, fire hazards from densely packed temporary shelters and disease pressure from inadequate sanitation have made Cox's Bazar one of the most documented humanitarian emergencies in Asia. The current funding decline arrives on top of that structural fragility.
Malnutrition in early childhood causes permanent cognitive and physical damage. Acute hunger at crisis or emergency levels — the two most severe categories in the international food security classification system — increases child mortality risk directly. With children comprising more than half the camp population, Save the Children said the scale of potential harm is large.
No major donor government has announced a new funding commitment in response to the warnings. Aid agencies operating in Cox's Bazar have not disclosed the specific dollar amount of the funding gap, but the UN refugee agency described the decline as significant enough to worsen conditions across the settlement.
