struggling. Offshore fishing is completely banned now — and if anyone tries to fish in secret, the junta seizes their catch and even arrests them.”116 Due to the movement restrictions imposed by the regime, Rohingya are not allowed to visit the main market. If they are not provided with food rations by WFP’s partners and only receive cash assistance, they are left depending on petty traders who bring goods from the main market to the camps for access to food to buy. However, those traders need to meet arbitrary taxation demands at all the military checkpoints to reach the camps. Sometimes soldiers seize the goods for their own use.117 By late April, as many as 70 percent of IDPs were reported to be facing starvation in some camps.118 BROUK received multiple reports of people having to resort to scavenging for taro roots, radishes, water cress, and sweet potato remains left over in the fields after the harvest. In Ohn Taw Gyi North, the largest of the camps in Sittwe, a family of four attempted suicide after only eating taro roots for many days. The father tragically died, and his wife and children only survived after their neighbours managed to intervene in time to save their lives. In a separate case, an elderly man lay down in the road and waited to be run over. When community members tried to move him to safety, he expressed that he would be better off dead.119 These are not isolated incidents. People are starving and desperate. BROUK has received reports that families are so hungry that they are going begging from camp to camp. In the highly coercive environment of the camps, which are surrounded by military checkpoints, people are extremely vulnerable. Women from every camp are engaging in sex work purely for their survival, especially widows and women from female-headed households.120 According to reports from the ground, food assistance was provided again from 24 May in some camps, but only to nutritionally vulnerable groups.121 BROUK understands from sources on the ground that WFP food rations will restart in June, but only until September due to ongoing funding shortfalls. Starvation is causing immense suffering and psychological distress in the camps. Desperation is forcing more and more people to risk their lives at the hands of human traffickers in order to escape. The camps are becoming increasingly dangerous environments due to starvation, overcrowding, squalid conditions, forced recruitment into the Myanmar military, and the ever-present threat of conflict intensifying in Sittwe.122 Pauktaw township There are five camps in Pauktaw township, where over 25,000 Rohingya IDPs are confined. According to UN data, almost 60 percent of the Rohingya population at four out of the five Pauktaw camps are children.123 It is extremely difficult to contact people in Pauktaw township due to the rolling telecommunications blackout imposed by the regime. 116 BNI, ‘Sittwe Township Muslims Face Crisis’ (16 May 2025) available at <https://www.bnionline.net/en/news/sittwe- township-muslims-face-crisis> accessed 31 May 2025. 117 BROUK reference ICJ11-PM2c-SIT-3. 118 ibid. 119 BROUK reference ICJ11-PM2c-SIT-1. 120 BROUK reference ICJ11-PM2c-SIT-5. 121 BROUK references ICJ11-PM2c-SIT-4 and ICJ11-PM2c-SIT-1. 122 In May, a fire broke out in Say Tha Mar Gyi camp, reportedly killing a three-year-old child and two women, one of whom was pregnant. 18 shelters were burnt down, leaving 180 families (around 1,400 people) homeless. BROUK reference ICJ11-PM2c-SIT-2. 123 Percentages and estimated total number of IDPs based on last publicly available figures compiled by the UN Shelter cluster, which counted 26,961 Rohingya IDPs in Pauktaw township in September 2024. 22