Caritas Bangladesh has been forced to scale back its relief work for Rohingya refugees in the city of Cox's Bazar as funding from foreign donors declines, its emergency response director said.
"Our biggest challenge now is funding," said Liton Luis Gomes, project director of Caritas Bangladesh's Emergency Response Program.
"We only received 60% of the funds we planned for this fiscal year; we didn't get the remaining 40%," Gomes told EWTN News by phone. "That's why we had to reduce the quantity while maintaining the quality of our services."
The cuts have fallen hardest on shelter and hygiene work. "If we used to be able to repair 500 houses, now it has decreased by 50%. If someone asks for a hygiene kit like soap, we can't give it urgently," Gomes said.
A shrinking budget
The decline in donor support has been steep. Caritas Bangladesh reported receiving about 916 million taka ($7.4 million) for its Rohingya response in 2017–18. Support fell to about 468 million taka ($3.8 million) in 2020 and about 417 million taka ($3.4 million) in 2024. It rose to about 531 million taka ($4.3 million) in 2025 before falling again to about 427 million taka ($3.5 million) so far in 2026, the agency said.
Even so, Gomes said, the charity is maintaining the services that do not require money. "We are doing things like training volunteers for the crisis period, raising awareness about disaster relief," he said.
Caritas Bangladesh has worked in the camps since the 2017 exodus, providing shelter, water and sanitation, child protection, and education. Between 2017 and 2024, its shelter and settlement program reached an average of 38,335 households a year, the charity said, through transitional shelter assistance, repairs, tarpaulin distribution, and monsoon support. It runs 12 learning centers and two youth and adolescent centers in the camps, teaching children under the Myanmar curriculum.
Lives in the camps
The charity's work is felt in individual lives. Mohammad Arshad, 23, who lives in Camp 19, has volunteered in the shelter program of Caritas Bangladesh's Emergency Response Program since 2018. He had studied up to class nine in Myanmar and helped his father run a grocery shop before the family was forced to flee. With no stable income and eight people to support, including his aging parents, his wife, his young son, and two younger siblings, he had lain awake wondering how he would provide.
"The job was more than just a source of income; it gave me a sense of purpose. I learned how to organize workers, coordinate with engineers, and develop technical skills," Arshad told EWTN News.
"This opportunity had not only helped me; it supports my family but also [has] given me hope for a better future. As I watched my son sleep peacefully at night, [I] whispered silent thanks, to Caritas Bangladesh, to the people who had trusted me, to the strength that kept me going," Arshad added.
Momtaz Begum, a vulnerable woman who received income-generating support through Caritas, described a similar turnaround.
"My husband's addiction left us in debt, and after he abandoned us, I struggled to provide for my family by raising poultry and growing vegetables. The COVID-19 pandemic made things worse, leaving us without food or income. When our home was destroyed in the rain, I moved to my father's house, where I faced mistreatment from relatives," she told EWTN News.
On Jan. 18, 2022, Begum received 25,000 taka (about $200) from Caritas Bangladesh to start an income-generating activity. She used the money to expand her cloth business.
"Earlier, I had to share profits with a shopkeeper, but now I buy cloth independently and keep all the profit. This has increased my daily earnings to 400-500 taka [about $3 to $4], allowing me to save … money," Begum told EWTN News.
A stateless people
Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh since the 1970s. In the 1990s, more than 250,000 sheltered in Cox's Bazar, though all but 20,000 were repatriated after a campaign that began in the early 2000s.
The influx resumed in 2015, and by 2017 an estimated 300,000 Rohingya were in Bangladesh. About 537,000 more fled across the border to Cox's Bazar in August 2017 as violence intensified in Myanmar's Rakhine state, prompting the United Nations to call the situation "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing."
By December 2023, 971,904 Rohingya were living in 33 camps in the Cox's Bazar district. Pope Francis met a group of Rohingya refugees during his apostolic visit to Bangladesh in 2017.
Looking ahead, Caritas Bangladesh said it aims to build stronger links between the refugees it assists and local businesses, and to deepen cooperation with government and aid agencies, even within a tighter budget.
