USAID provides $75m in aid to Rohingya, host community in Bangladesh

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is providing an additional $75 million in humanitarian assistance to help vulnerable Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar and members of the Bangladeshi host community meet ongoing needs exacerbated by the increasing costs of food and fuel.

With this new funding, USAID will work with the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) to provide critically needed food and nutrition assistance, infrastructure maintenance, disaster risk reduction, and logistics support, it said in a statement on Thursday.

The new funding will provide critical and life-saving assistance to nearly 600,000 people, it said.

The food and nutrition assistance includes electronic vouchers for staple and fresh foods at designated distribution sites as well as support to feeding programs for malnourished children six months to five years of age, and pregnant and lactating women.

These programmes will target populations residing in 33 refugee camps and 130 sites in the local Bangladeshi community. In addition, through disaster risk reduction programming, WFP will work with the community to maintain and improve public infrastructure within the camps.

Bangladesh hosts nearly one million refugees, of whom a majority are ethnic Rohingya. More than 774,000 refugees were forced to flee their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine State six years ago after members of Myanmar military mounted a campaign of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other horrific atrocities and abuses against Rohingya. The majority of these refugees are living in one of the world’s largest refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar.

The United States is committed to helping the Rohingya, and USAID will continue to support them in their time of need, as well as the generous communities in Bangladesh that host them, it said in the statement.