BANGLADESH: When the money stopped coming, the classrooms went quiet. Then the weddings began.
Across Bangladesh’s sprawling refugee camps, Rohingya children are paying the price for the United States’ decision to drastically scale back its foreign aid program. Based on interviews conducted by Associated Press, dozens of children, parents, teachers, and aid workers paint a grim picture: fewer resources, fewer protections, and a sharp rise in abuse, exploitation and fear among children who already have almost nothing. For many families, the cuts didn’t feel like a policy change. They felt like abandonment.
A lifeline pulled away
More than 600,000 children live among the 1.2 million Rohingya refugees packed into bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters in southern Bangladesh. They are not allowed to work. They cannot go home to Myanmar, where the same military accused of carrying out genocide against their people still rules. Aid is not a supplement to life here—it is life, for years.
The United States was the single largest donor, keeping food distributions, schools and child protection programs running. That changed in January, when President Donald Trump dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, calling it wasteful even though foreign aid made up just 1% of the federal budget.
In Bangladesh, the impact was immediate. U.S. funding for the Rohingya response in 2025 was nearly cut in half, leaving the overall humanitarian appeal only 50% funded. Aid agencies now warn that next year may be worse.
UNICEF alone lost more than a quarter of its funding. In June, 2,800 schools shut their doors. Child protection services, healthcare, nutrition and sanitation programs were slashed—sometimes overnight.
When school disappears, danger moves in
For children, the loss of school meant far more than missed lessons. It meant losing the safest place in the camp.
With classrooms closed, families began marrying off daughters still in their early teens, believing it might protect them or ease financial strain. Many of those marriages quickly became abusive. Boys as young as 10 were sent to do hard, dangerous labour. Other children drifted through the narrow, crowded pathways of the camps with nowhere to go and no one watching.
That made them easy targets.
UNICEF says reported abductions and kidnappings more than quadrupled between January and mid-November compared to the same period last year, affecting 560 children. Reports of children being recruited by armed groups for training and support roles surged eightfold, with 817 cases documented. Child marriages rose by 21%, and child labour by 17%—numbers which aid workers say almost certainly underestimate the true scale of the crisis.
“When funding was cut, education was one of the first things to go,” said Patrick Halton, a UNICEF child protection manager. “When children have nothing to do and nowhere safe to be, the risks multiply very quickly.”
Official assurances, lingering questions
The U.S. State Department says it has provided more than $168 million to support the Rohingya since the start of Trump’s term, though U.N. tracking data show the 2025 contribution at $156 million. Officials argue the administration has encouraged other countries to step up, noting that 11 nations increased their funding by a combined $72 million.
“The Trump Administration continues to pursue diplomatic efforts to encourage additional countries to help shoulder the burden,” the department said.
It did not provide evidence that U.S. diplomacy directly led to those increases.
A girl who wanted to teach
For Hasina, the consequences of the aid cuts are written into her daily life.
She was 16 when her school closed. Soon after, her family married her off. Now, she says, her husband beats and sexually abuses her. Once a bright student who excelled in English and dreamed of becoming a teacher, Hasina spends most days inside her small shelter, cooking, cleaning and waiting—often in fear—for what comes next (her full name is being withheld to protect her from retaliation).
“I dreamed of being something,” she said softly. “Of working for the community. My life is destroyed.”
Her story is not unique. Across the camps, children’s futures are shrinking alongside the aid meant to protect them. What remains is a fragile existence—where childhood ends early, and survival comes at a devastating cost.
