ReliefWeb

Executive summary

• Overall vulnerability levels have remained alarmingly high since 2019 among Rohingya households. The latest findings showed that 95 percent of all Rohingya households are moderately to highly vulnerable and remain entirely dependent on humanitarian assistance, similar to 2020 (96 percent) and 2019 (94 percent), with a gradual increase from 2017 (80 percent). These results reflect the slow economic recovery of an already fragile population with neither income sources nor livelihood opportunities.

• Overall vulnerability in the host community has shown an upward trend since 2017 and has remained high since 2020, with 52 percent of the population moderately to highly vulnerable in 2021 compared to 51 percent in 2020. The main drivers were economic contraction and decline in economic activity across most sectors causing reduced income opportunities and market volatility during the COVID-19 lockdown in a population highly dependent on daily wage labour.

• The proportion of Rohingya households with inadequate food consumption (poor and borderline) improved in 2021 reaching 45 percent, compared to 50 percent in the previous year – yet remains higher than 2019 preCOVID-19 levels (42 percent). In the host community, the proportion of inadequate food consumption increased in 2021 reaching 38 percent of households surveyed, driven by the increase in the proportion of households with borderline food consumption, showing continued challenges for the host population in meeting their food consumption needs since the onset of the pandemic.

• A simulated scenario, discounting the value of assistance, showed that economic vulnerability would remain high with 94 percent of Rohingya households consuming below the Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB). This reflects the fragility of the camp economy and its full dependence on assistance to cover the essential needs of almost all households.

• Despite the current level of humanitarian assistance, 51 percent of Rohingya households cannot afford the MEB. Compared to 2020, economic vulnerability has slightly increased among Rohingya and host communities (by 2 percent each). This implies a significant dependency on humanitarian assistance. This also indicates that the assistance is only able to offset part of household needs because of the population’s underlying fragility and market volatility.

• The monthly expenditure share on food continued to be high: 71 percent for Rohingya households and 65 percent for host communities. For Rohingya households, this is only slightly below the severe economic vulnerability threshold of 75 percent.

• Two thirds of Rohingya households (68 percent) and half of the households in the host community (52 percent) relied on less preferred or less expensive food for at least one day, representing the coping strategy most frequently used for both populations. More than one third of Rohingya households (36 percent) and one fourth of host community households (25 percent) borrowed food or relied on support from friends or relatives.