May 26. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Royingya refugees from Bangladesh will receive less monetary aid to buy food due to the financing difficulties faced by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) at a particularly critical time after the devastating passage of cyclone ‘Mocha’ through Burma and Bangladesh.
Meal aid vouchers at the Cox’s Bazar refugee supercamp have gone from providing $12 (11.1 euros) to refugees to just eight dollars (7.4 euros) in just two months, less than nine cents per meal , well below the minimum threshold to guarantee food security for hundreds of thousands of people.
Although the macro camp was spared the direct hit of the cyclone, the strong winds of the storm left enormous material damage to the fragile homes of the refugees.
“Anything that is less than 12 dollars is going to have a direct consequence not only for the nutrition of women and children, but also for the safety of all those who are in these camps,” warned the director of the WFP. for Bangladesh, Dom Scalpelli.
The WFP recalls that in the Cox’s Bazar macro camp, before this new cut, there were almost a million refugees who completely depended on humanitarian aid to survive, that at least four out of ten families barely consumed enough food and that one of every ten children suffer from acute malnutrition.
The lack of food security forces families to withdraw their children from school to put them to work as slaves in illegal businesses –with the consequent tension with the communities of the host country– and girls to contract forced marriages .
Thus, the WFP is requesting an approximate amount of 56 million dollars (about 52 million euros) so that the refugees once again receive a full ration “and keep this vital aid channel intact until the end of the year,” added Scalpelli. after claiming the WFP relief operation as “the only reliable source of food for the Rohingya”.
