Without urgent treatment, malnutrition can be fatal

“She can’t sit or walk. And she hasn’t started talking,” Anowara says of her daughter, 14-month-old Rifa.

“I want my baby to smile, walk, and talk,” she says. 

Rifa is one of thousands of young children who are dangerously malnourished in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp. 

Last year, UNICEF provided life-saving treatment to nearly 12,000 children under the age of five suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Cox’s Bazaar.

This is a condition that leaves children dangerously thin, weak, and highly vulnerable to disease. Children with it are 11 times more likely to die than healthy children.  

Now, the crisis is deepening.

In February 2025 alone, over 1,000 new cases of severe acute malnutrition among children were reported. Poor quality diets and food shortages, coupled with prolonged monsoon rains in 2024 that affected harvests, meant children did not get enough food to eat.  

Spikes in severe diarrhoea and outbreaks of cholera and dengue fever have also hit already malnourished children hard. With a growing number of families fleeing violence and seeking shelter in the camps in recent months, the situation is only going to get worse. 

“For now, we can provide the services that Rohingya mothers come seeking, and that very sick children need, but as needs keep rising and funding declines, families are telling us they are terrified of what will happen to their babies if there are further food ration cuts and if life-saving nutrition treatment services stop,” said UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh, Rana Flowers. 

“These families cannot yet safely return home, and they have no legal right to work, so continued humanitarian help is not optional – it is essential. UNICEF is determined to stay and deliver for children, but without guaranteed funding, critical services will be at risk.” 

What is the Rohingya crisis 

In August 2017, as violence flared in Myanmar, hundreds of thousands of terrified Rohingya fled across the border to Bangladesh in search of safety.  

Leaving behind their homes, their belongings, their communities, some made the journey in crowded fishing boats, braving the rough waters of the Bay of Bengal. 

Others made the journey on foot. Walking for days through dense forests and across hilly terrain.

Many of them were children, pregnant women, sick or elderly. 

 As the refugees poured onto the beaches and rice paddies of Bangladesh, some built makeshift huts for shelter.

But most of those arriving slept the open air, suffering from exhaustion, sickness and hunger and bringing with them accounts of unspeakable violence and brutality that had forced them to flee. 

Those fleeing attacks and violence in the 2017 exodus joined around 300,000 people already in Bangladesh from previous waves of displacement, effectively forming the world’s largest refugee camp.  

More than seven years later, one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are still living in exile from their home country.

Half of these refugees are children, and many have been born into this limbo.

They rely entirely on humanitarian assistance and live in temporary shelters in highly congested camps, leaving them vulnerable to disease outbreaks, malnutrition, extreme weather, and gender-based violence, child marriage and child labour. 

Raheema’s escape to safety 

Ten-year-old Raheema loved her home in Myanmar, but when the violence there got so bad, her parents had no choice – they had to flee their home to protect their children.

Raheema walked with her mother, brothers, sisters and aunt for over 60 miles through the jungle.

It took them more than six days to reach safety in Bangladesh. Raheema misses her old life but she’s making the best of living in her new home – the refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.

Raheema’s favourite thing about the camp is the child friendly space, set up by UNICEF. A safe place where she can learn, play and make new friends.