Rohingya children at risk: The human impact of cutting aid in the world’s largest refugee camp

Photo-essay by Sahat Zia Hero

In the narrow alleys of the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, childhood is being rewritten by crisis. Once filled with laughter, learning, and play, these spaces are now marked by illness, fear, and an uncertain future. As international funding declines year after year, the first to bear the weight are those least able to endure it the children.

According to UNICEF and partners, there are about 500,000 children under the age of 18 living in the camps. These are not abstract statistics, each number is a child whose world has contracted, whose dreams now exist under the shadow of deprivation.

Rohingya mother holds her baby suffering from scabies on the face while waiting for treatment in a camp clinic. Photo © Sahat Zia Hero

Across the camps, thousands of Rohingya children endure untreated skin diseases, infections, and scabies that spread rapidly in overcrowded shelters. These illnesses are not isolated medical cases, they are symptoms of a deeper neglect. Shrinking budgets mean shrinking healthcare: clinics are overstretched, medicines are scarce, and preventive care is almost nonexistent.

A Rohingya mother carries her sick baby, waiting to receive treatment in a clinic in the refugee camp at Cox's Bazar. © Sahat Zia Hero

As funding dwindles, health services for children deteriorate at an alarming pace. Many clinics now operate with fewer staff, limited supplies. Parents often leave without medicines or answers, carrying their sick children back to shelters where conditions worsen their illness. For many families, each trip to the clinic ends with a painful truth: help is no longer guaranteed.

Children playing over drainage beside a road. © Sahat Zia Hero

With major funding cuts, humanitarian agencies have been forced to reduce water, sanitation, and hygiene programs. Drainage systems overflow with waste. Canals blocked with garbage. The World Food Programme (WFP) has stopped distributing soap bars, a simple item that once protected children from disease. In these conditions, infections spread faster than aid can reach. Scabies outbreaks, fungal infections, and skin allergies have become part of daily life.

A family of five children under 18 poses inside a small, cramped shelter. © Sahat Zia Hero

Overcrowded shelters leave no space for privacy, safety, or cleanliness. Children sleep shoulder-to-shoulder in rooms with poor ventilation, sharing blankets that cannot be kept hygienic. In these tight conditions, a minor rash can turn into a chronic infection, and an ordinary cough can quickly spread to dozens of children. Crisis becomes routine, and illness becomes expected.

Children sitting at the doorway of a shelter. © Sahat Zia Hero

Beyond disease, children now face growing risks due to weakened protection systems. With fewer child-protection workers, fewer safe spaces, and slower emergency response, children are more vulnerable to kidnapping, trafficking, exploitation, and violence. The fear that once echoed quietly in the background now overshadows daily life. Many parents keep their children indoors, not for safety, but out of desperation.

Contaminated water pools around a shelter after drainage lines are blocked with the wastes. © Sahat Zia Hero

Despite everything, Rohingya children still dream, of school, of freedom, of a life without fear or illness. But funding cuts are slowly erasing these dreams. Environmental hazards grow, healthcare shrinks, and basic needs become uncertain. Their struggle is silent, often ignored, hidden behind layers of displacement and a crisis the world has chosen to forget.

Children playing over a large waste-collection point as the sun sets. © Sahat Zia Hero

Education, already fragile in the camps, faces further devastation. If funding cuts continue, learning centers will close, teachers will go unpaid, and thousands of children, among the 500,000 under 18 years old may lose their only access to basic education. Without learning, an entire generation risks growing up without the tools to rebuild their lives or protect their future.

A small baby sleeps in an unprotected handmade cradle outside the shelter. © Sahat Zia Hero

Food insecurity deepens the crisis. If WFP is forced to reduce food rations again, malnutrition among infants and toddlers will surge.

Two little boys sit on a bamboo fence, holding a taro leaf like umbrellas as monsoon rain begins to fall. © Sahat Zia Hero

This photo-essay is not only a documentation of suffering, it is a call for action. Rohingya children deserve dignity, safety, and a chance at a future. Their lives should not depend on the rise and fall of international funding cycles. Humanitarian assistance must be restored before the damage becomes irreversible.

They are not just numbers in a report. They are children, among the roughly 500,000 under 18 years old, who deserve to heal, to grow, and to hope.

Sahat Zia Hero is a photo-journalist and human rights advocate, co-founder of Rohingyatographer, and recipient of both the Prince Claus Fund (PCF) Seeds Award and the Nansen Refugee Regional Award. This photo-essay was produced with support from the Relief Grant from the PCF Urgency Programme, which strengthened Sahat's ongoing work in journalism, photography, and cultural documentation within the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh.