TRANSCRIPT:
For scores of people in Myanmar, it's a miserable existence.
Myanmar has been in crisis since the military seized back power in 2021, prompting a nationwide armed uprising and re-igniting a simmering conflict in Rakhine between the military and a powerful armed group, the Arakan Army.
The United Nations has estimated 40 per cent of the Myanmar population needs humanitarian assistance.
But the acting UN head in Myanmar, Michael Dunford, says security fears and restrictions from both sides mean the United Nations is unable to move food beyond Sittwe, the military-controlled state capital, into the central and northern parts of Rakhine.
"World Food Program is ready to provide that support. We need an end to the conflict, we need the access, and most importantly, we also need the levels of funding to be able to scale. It doesn't make sense if we have the access but we don't have the funding and the capacity to respond."
Funding however is the heart of the problem.
Along the Myanmar-Thailand border, there are more than 107,000 Myanmar refugees living in camps.
Inside Myanmar alone, millions have been displaced by the years of conflict, including members of the Rohingya minority who are trapped in internment camps.
For years, Myanmar counted the United States as its largest humanitarian donor.
Foreign aid from the United States - via US State Department grants - was helping to keep people on both sides of the border alive.
But earlier this year, US President Donald Trump ordered steep cuts to the US foreign aid budget, a decision staunchly defended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a senate hearing.
"Well, they (aid grants) have to either make our country safer, or they have to make our country stronger, or they have to help make our country more prosperous. It has to do at least one of those three things... Now what that means is - there are some great causes in the world. There really are. There are some great causes. There are some horrifying things that are happening on the planet. America cannot solve every single one of them."
Myanmar refugee Mahmud Karmar says the decision has made an already challenging existence even worse.
"Even in the past it was difficult, but our family still had something to eat. They (donors) were providing. When the time came for the ration distribution, we would collect it and out family could eat... Right now, there’s nothing. So what do we have to find to survive? I’m collecting bamboo shoots for my family’s survival."
Despite Secretary Rubio's assurances that no-one has died as a result of the changes -
"That's false, that's fake."
- another refugee, Mohammed Taher, says it isn't true.
He says people have lost loved ones - including his own 2-year-old son, who he says died from malnutrition after food rations to their Myanmar camp stopped in April.
Border Consortium executive director Léon de Riedmatten says his group - the region’s main aid organisation - was forced to terminate food assistance for 85 per cent of camp residents when a State Department grant was ended by Donald Trump on July 31st.
"The cut from the US of course has a very big impact. Because the US was the only donor for food and cooking fuel for the camps."
Data provided by aid workers indicates the number of people living in these conditions has increased nearly tenfold over the two years from September 2023 to August this year.
Their reports suggest acute malnutrition is already widespread, with parents skipping meals to feed their children.
Ababa Moe is one of them.
She lives in the Mae La refugee camp just over the border in Thailand, with her 17 year old son, who is cognitively closer to a toddler, after fleeing Myanmar when soldiers attacked her village.
"After they cut the ration, our lives have been difficult. We can still eat, but instead of two meals a day, I only eat one time."
The State Department says the US continues to stand with the people of Myanmar, and that it signed an agreement on September 30th for a temporary renewal of the grant, allowing rations to resume through to the end of the year.
But Léon de Riedmatten says after that, the funds will run out - and the State Department has made clear there will be no further extensions.
That is of little comfort to refugees like Mahmud Karmar.
He says he has already lost 16 kilograms, his 54-kilogram frame now so slight that he has become unrecognisable even to close friends.
Mr Karmar says he is losing hope that he can survive.
"Here is nothing to live on. I don't know anything any more. I don't see any pathway ahead. I cannot fathom any more."
