The Daily Star
Diplomatic Correspondent June 05, 2020
The UN World Food Programme will implement a $35 million project to provide work opportunities and community services among the Rohingya population in Cox's Bazar.
This funding is part of the World Bank's $165 million grant meant to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief. The WFP is partnering with the disaster management ministry to implement the project.
The US $35 million grant will go toward providing work opportunities and community services to Rohingya. This includes food assistance support to 700,000 people as part of the Covid-19 humanitarian response in the camps, said a WFP statement issued yesterday.
Post Covid-19 restrictions, the project will scale up self-reliance opportunities for extremely vulnerable families in the camps and target young people with volunteering opportunities to promote social cohesion, it said.
The self-reliance programmes aim to improve the economic and social resilience of 60,000 Displaced Rohingya Population households.
"This is done through working days centred around short-term community services, volunteer services, and training courses," WFP said.
It also includes skills development and self-reliance activities for the vulnerable households. For extremely vulnerable households and individuals it includes transfers in return for their engagement in volunteer networks, it said.
The project will provide work opportunities for around 40,000 Rohingya households which is equivalent to reaching more than 20 percent of the camp population, to help improve camp conditions through public works such as site, accessibility, and drainage improvement as well as reforestation.
"I hope the implementation of this agreement is conducive to improving access to the rights and privileges of the Rohingya people," said Shah Kamal, Secretary of the MoDMR.
"These are important programmes for both the Rohingya and host communities," said Richard Ragan, WFP Representative to Bangladesh.
"To improve medium to long-term resilience and social cohesion, people need to have the skills, market linkages, and resources to improve their long-term food security."
WFP provides food assistance to 860,000 Rohingya people each month and is supporting around 600,000 people in the host community in Cox's Bazar.
There are a total of 1.1 million Rohingyas in Bangladesh. Of them, some 750,000 fled to Bangladesh amid a military crackdown since August 2017.
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