Bangladesh

Reduced funding, which has led to cuts in essential services like education and healthcare, and international aid cuts have meant that this has been a particularly difficult year for children living in the world’s largest refugee camp.

Shahidul Haque is Save the Children’s Advocacy, Communications and Media Director in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Having worked on the response for six years and living close to the refugee camps himself, he has seen firsthand how worsening conditions—exacerbated this year by recent aid cuts—are affecting a generation of children growing up in the world’s largest refugee camps.

Bangladesh experiences 19 landslides annually, with a 4% increase in these disaster events each year. They are particularly prevalent in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and surrounding districts including Chittagong because of intense monsoon rainfall, rapid urbanization, deforestation, and unregulated hill cutting. These events have caused over 700 deaths since 2000, destruction of infrastructure, and long-term displacement.

More than 1.8 million children will miss out on learning due to aid cuts impacting Save the Children’s education programmes in over 20 countries

With just a few weeks to go until the food ration cuts take effect, desperation inside the camps is growing, several families told Save the Children.

Children made up just under half - 44% - of predominantly Rohingya refugees leaving Bangladesh and Myanmar by boat in 2024 as the number of people taking to sea continues to rise.

Cyclone-proof food, climate resilient schools and aid delivering drones are just some of the ways Save the Children has been tackling the impacts of the climate crisis on children in 2024.