Food assistance slashed for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees trapped in Bangladesh camps

SYDNEY (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees struggling to survive in Bangladesh’s overcrowded camps will see their food assistance slashed starting on Wednesday, raising alarm throughout the increasingly desperate community.

Currently, the 1.2 million Rohingya trapped in the squalid camps receive $12 a month per person, an amount the persecuted minority from Myanmar has long warned is barely sustainable. Most of the Rohingya in the camps fled brutal attacks by Myanmar's military in 2017 and they are legally barred from working in Bangladesh, leaving them largely reliant upon humanitarian aid to survive.

Under the United Nations’ World Food Program’s new tiered system, the amount each person receives will vary based on the severity of their family’s needs, with around 17% of the population getting as little as $7 per month. A third of the population that has been classified as “extremely food insecure,” such as households headed by children, will continue receiving $12.

“It is very difficult to understand how we will survive now with only $7. Our children will suffer the most,” said camp resident Mohammed Rahim, who said he and his wife were already struggling to feed their three children before the reduction. “I am deeply concerned that people may face severe hunger and some may even die due to lack of food.”

The WFP has repeatedly warned that rations in the camps could be slashed as a result of last year’s steep foreign aid cuts by the United States and other countries, which saw the agency lose a third of its funding. But WFP spokesperson Kun Li said Wednesday’s change in food distribution was unrelated to the funding cuts, and it should not be described as a “ration cut,” despite two-thirds of the population receiving fewer rations as a result.

The agency said a ration cut implies food assistance is being reduced below 2,100 calories a day, the recommended minimum standard for emergency food aid. But the WFP said even those who will now receive just $7 per month will still be able to meet that threshold.

The plan “ensures that even with differentiated ration sizes, all Rohingya continue meeting their minimum food needs, strengthening fairness, transparency, and equity in food assistance,” the agency said in a statement.

But a ration cut is precisely what the change means for the Rohingya, said Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammad Mizanur Rahman.

With desperation already running high, Rahman told The Associated Press that the Rohingya will attempt to flee in search of food and work.

“Law and order will be deteriorated,” he said.

The same military that attacked the Rohingya in 2017 during what the U.S. declared a genocide overthrew Myanmar's government in 2021 and remains in control of the country. That has made it virtually impossible for the Rohingya to return home safely.

Last year’s foreign aid cuts deepened misery across the camps, particularly for children, with the closure of schools contributing to a surge in kidnapping, child marriage and child labor. Programs to support the Rohingya were only around half funded in 2025, and are only 19 percent funded this year.

In 2023, the WFP was forced to cut rations to $8 a month due to a drop in donations. By November of that year, the agency said that 90% of camp residents could not afford an adequate diet and 15 percent of children were suffering from acute malnutrition, the highest rate ever recorded in the camps. Rations were restored to $12 a month in 2024.

Hungry, exhausted and increasingly hopeless camp residents who lived through that ration cut wonder how they will cope moving forward. Dozens of Rohingya staged protests against the new system on Tuesday, calling for the restoration of full rations. Many held signs warning of starvation and declaring “Food is a right, not a choice.”

Rahim, the father of three whose food aid has been reduced to $7 a month, said he is sick, and his children cannot safely leave the camps to earn money due to the increasing risk of kidnapping, violence and trafficking.

Rahim said several people he knows are already considering returning to Myanmar because of the reduced rations, despite the severe risks. Many others, he said, are considering fleeing to Malaysia on rickety fishing boats — an incredibly dangerous journey that results in hundreds of Rohingya children, women and men dying or vanishing each year.

“Ration cuts are pushing people toward life-threatening risks, leaving them with no safe choices,” he said. “I am very worried about the future of our children.”

Rohingya refugees struggling to survive in Bangladesh’s overcrowded camps, protest after their food assistance was slashed, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo)

Rohingya refugees struggling to survive in Bangladesh’s overcrowded camps, protest after their food assistance was slashed, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo)

FILE - Rohingya refugee women and children walk along a street in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Nov. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu, File)

FILE - An aerial view of a Rohingya refugee camp, home to over a million of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority, covers the land in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Nov. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu, File)

CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.

Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.

Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.

Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.

Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.

The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.

A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.

A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.

Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.

Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.

A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.

“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.

“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.

That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.

The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.

The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.

Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.

A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)