UN seeks nearly $1 bn in aid for Rohingya refugees

The United Nations announced Monday it was seeking nearly $1 billion to provide life-saving aid this year for some 1.5 million Rohingya refugees and their hosts in Bangladesh.

The UN and more than 100 partners launched a two-year 2025-26 Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya crisis, amid what it called "dwindling financial resources and competing global crises".

The appeal seeks $934.5 million in its first year to reach some 1.48 million people including Rohingya refugees and host communities.

Around a million members of the persecuted and mostly Muslim minority live in squalid relief camps in Bangladesh, most of whom arrived after fleeing the 2017 military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.

"In its eighth year, the Rohingya humanitarian crisis remains largely out of the international spotlight, but needs remain urgent," the UN said in a statement.

Launching the appeal in Geneva, UN migration agency chief Amy Pope said drastic foreign aid cuts were putting lives on the line.

US President Donald Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid in January pending a review, after which Washington announced the cancellation of 83 per cent of programmes at the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

"If we face cuts as organisations, the Rohingya don't eat, or they don't have protection, or they don't have basic life-saving needs met," Pope said.

She said the international community had failed to create the conditions whereby the Rohingyas would be able to go home safely.

"If we do not provide other options for the Rohingyas, we are leaving them completely dependent on humanitarian aid. And so cutting that aid, without giving them other options, means that people will die," she said.

"When you deprive people of hope and opportunity, you create conditions for more despair," added Pope, and "the problem gets much, much worse".

The overcrowded settlements around Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh are reliant on aid and suffer from widespread malnutrition.

UN chief Antonio Guterres visited the area earlier this month, in a show of solidarity.

Khalilur Rahman, Bangladesh's high representative on Rohingya issues, said he was cautiously optimistic that a cessation of hostilities in neighbouring Rakhine State in Myanmar -- a pre-requisite for the return of refugees -- was now "within the realm of possibility".

The Arakan Army, an ethnic minority rebel group in Myanmar, is engaged in a fierce fight with the military for control of Rakhine, where it has seized swathes of territory in the past year.

"We look at it with cautious optimism that there are some fleeting lights at the end of the tunnel," he said -- adding that it was therefore not the time for donors to back out.

UN refugees chief Filippo Grandi added that ultimately, "the solution lies in Myanmar", and the situation was perhaps moving in ways "that may open up the door for the beginning of a solution".

The UN statement said that until the situation in Rakhine becomes conducive to safe and voluntary returns, "the international community must continue to fund life-saving assistance to refugees in the camps."

Any funding shortfalls could "force many to resort to desperate measures, such as embarking on dangerous boat journeys to seek safety", it added.