UN chief visits Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh as hunger fears rise

Antonio Guterres’s visit comes after the UN food agency says it may have to halve food vouchers for the Rohingya starting next month.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (R) visits the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre in Ukhia, Cox's Bazar on March 14, 2025. [Munir Uz Zaman/AFP]

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has visited Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh as their food rations face drastic cuts next month, threatening already dire living conditions in the world’s largest refugee settlement.Guterres’s visit on Friday to the border district of Cox’s Bazar is seen as critical, after the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced potential cuts to emergency food supplies following the shutdown of USAID operations.

Starting in April, the WFP may be forced to reduce food vouchers for the Rohingya from $12.50 to just $6 per month because of a lack of funding, raising fears of rising hunger in the overcrowded camps.The United States provided the WFP with $4.4bn of its $9.7bn budget in 2024, but Washington’s international aid funding has been slashed under President Donald Trump. Until recently, the US has been the top donor for Rohingya refugee aid.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF said youngsters in the camps were experiencing the worst levels of malnutrition since 2017, with admissions for severe malnutrition treatment up 27 percent in February compared with the same month last year.

‘Simply going to starve’

“Whatever we are given now is not enough. If that’s halved, we are simply going to starve,” said Mohammed Sabir, a 31-year-old refugee from Myanmar who has lived in a Cox’s Bazar camp since 2017.Sabir, a father of five children, added, “We are not allowed to work here. I feel helpless when I think of my children. What will I feed them?”

Rohingya refugees walk towards the venue where they will have an Iftar meal in the evening with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Muhammad Yunus, chief adviser of the Bangladesh interim government, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 14, 2025 [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

Bangladesh’s interim government, which took power in August last year following mass protests that removed former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, is hoping that Guterres’s visit will help draw international attention to the crisis and mobilise aid for refugees and citizens alike. Bangladesh is sheltering more than 1 million Rohingya, members of a persecuted Muslim minority who fled violent purges in neighbouring Myanmar, mostly in 2016 and 2017, to camps in the southern Cox’s Bazar district, where they have limited access to jobs or education.