Crippling cuts to humanitarian aid funding are compounding the suffering of Rohingya. In March, the World Food Programme (WFP) publicly announced it would be forced to cut off life-saving food assistance to people in Myanmar - including Rohingya confined to camps - due to a $60 million funding shortfall. According to ground reports, the last time that all 112,000 Rohingya IDPs in the Sittwe camps received food rations was the last week in February. By late April, as many as 70 percent of IDPs were reported to be facing starvation in some Sittwe camps. 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. This is not an isolated incident. The camps are becoming increasingly coercive environments due to starvation, overcrowding, squalid conditions, military checkpoints, forced recruitment into the Myanmar military, and the ever-present threat of conflict intensifying in Sittwe. People are starving and desperate. BROUK has received reports that families are so hungry that they are going begging from camp to camp. Women from every camp are engaging in sex work purely for their survival, especially widows and women from female-headed households. BROUK has continued to document the forced recruitment of Rohingya youth and men from the camps in Sittwe. It is very difficult to verify exactly how many Rohingya youth and men have been forcibly conscripted into the Myanmar military since the regime began its campaign in February 2024, but BROUK estimates that the total number is likely to have exceeded 5,000. Rohingya IDPs in the Sittwe area report that conscription orders are accompanied by extortion demands. Instead of the regime paying salaries to the recruits, every month money is forcibly collected from all IDPs in the camps to pay money directly to the families of forced recruits. This scheme is apparently administered through the regime-appointed Camp Management Committees and village administrators. BROUK has received reports that some Rohingya men are so desperate to earn money to feed their families that they have expressed the desire to be selected for forced recruitment, simply so that their families will receive the money and avoid starvation. 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 and ongoing atrocity crimes by the Arakan Army in northern Rakhine State Rohingya in northern Rakhine State are also starving after living under the regime’s trade and aid blockade for 18 months, since the resumption of armed conflict in the area in November 2023. BROUK conducted research in a total of 15 villages in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships, with a total estimated population of 13,500. In Buthidaung, on average almost half of the population were IDPs, most of whom had been displaced for over a year. BROUK’s researchers collected information about the three pillars of food security - food access, food availability, and food use - as well as availability and adequacy of drinking water and sanitation facilities. They also asked respondents about public health challenges, such as outbreaks of diarrhoea, and signs of severe acute malnutrition among children. Children with severe acute malnutrition are at risk of dying without immediate treatment. In Buthidaung township, respondents reported that they are eating just two meals a day of low-quality rice. Occasionally they ate curry usually made only from leaves – no oil, fresh vegetables, or sources of protein. In one village, two children and one elderly person died during a recent outbreak of diarrhoeal disease. Due to the regime’s ban on importing medicines to Rakhine State, basic supplies 2

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