Bangladesh Appeal
Humanitarian Action for Children
UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children appeal helps support the agency’s work as it provides conflict- and disaster-affected children with access to water, sanitation, nutrition, education, health and protection services. Return to main appeal page.
Bangladesh snapshot
Appeal highlights
- The people of Bangladesh continue to face the challenges of living in a country at high risk of such climate-related disasters as floods, cyclones, landslides and river erosion. Due to these and other circumstances, a projected 6.7 million people will require humanitarian support in 2024, including 3 million children, in sectors including WASH, education, child protection and nutrition.
- The number of Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh has risen slightly, reaching 963,038 individuals (52 per cent children) in Cox’s Bazar District and Bhasan Char, up from 943,529 early in 2023. Yet a contraction of financial support for humanitarian assistance for this refugee population has increased the vulnerabilities they face.
- UNICEF will target 3.2 million people (1.7 million children), including 963,038 Rohingya refugees, with life-saving multisectoral interventions encompassing health, nutrition, WASH, education, child protection, humanitarian cash and risk communication activities. UNICEF will also invest in building communities’ resilience and strengthening links between humanitarian and development efforts.
- UNICEF is appealing for $150.3 million to deliver child-focused and gender-sensitive humanitarian support for refugees and host communities and for other vulnerable people, especially women and children, at risk of dengue, floods and cyclones in 2024.
Key planned targets
511,622 children and women accessing primary health care
2.5 million children/caregivers accessing community-based mental health and psychosocial support
384,745 children accessing formal or non-formal education, including early learning
735,654 people accessing a sufficient quantity and quality of water
Funding requirements for 2024
Country needs and strategy
Humanitarian needs
The people of Bangladesh continue to live with significant recurrent floods, cyclones, landslides and riverbank erosion. Up to an estimated 18.3 million people are exposed to these climate-related hazards, including 7.9 million children and 4.9 million women. In 2024, climatic events are expected to impact some of the most vulnerable people in Bangladesh, leading to deaths and injuries; displacement of populations; damage to shelters constructed of bamboo and tarpaulins; and damage to public infrastructure and facilities including WASH facilities, schools and health facilities.
The humanitarian situation of the Rohingya refugees remains a protracted crisis. As of 31 August 2023, Bangladesh was hosting 963,038 Rohingya refugees, 52 per cent of them children. This is slight increase from the 943,529 Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh in 2022. Around 30,600 refugees were relocated to Bhasan Char Island to decongest the camps in Cox's Bazar. The Rohingya refugee camps are overcrowded and have other physical challenges that limit refugees' access to education, protection, food, water, shelter and health services. This raises risks of mortality, morbidity and protection violations and affects people's well-being, with women and children in particular continuing to face multiple deprivations and increasing needs. While humanitarian support has decreased in the past year, refugees remain reliant on significant humanitarian assistance, particularly essential services. It is essential that vulnerable women and children receive basic services to maintain their dignity.
Multiple public health emergencies continue to pose risks for children and families in Bangladesh, including acute watery diarrhoea, dengue and scabies outbreaks. In 2023, Bangladesh faced the worst outbreak of the dengue viral diseases in its history, with 206,288 dengue cases identified as of 1 October, with 1,006 deaths (57 per cent female, 11 per cent children below 15 years old). According to the World Health Organization, this mosquito-borne disease spread to all 64 districts in Bangladesh, with one in every five people infected a child. The outbreak demonstrates the profound impact public health emergencies can have on the public health system and the health of the population. Further investment is needed to respond to continued outbreaks in 2024.
Despite significant investment by the Government and other actors to support the implementation of risk-informed development strategies and plans, the recurrence of climate-related disasters, with their consequences on health and well-being, calls for innovative stakeholder collaboration and critical human, environmental and economic interventions.
UNICEF’s strategy
To address the needs of crisis-affected people in Bangladesh, UNICEF implements an integrated package of life-saving health, nutrition, WASH, education, child protection, humanitarian cash transfers and risk communication interventions. In a country with such recurring disasters as cyclones, floods and landslides, UNICEF invests in building communities’ preparedness and resilience and works to strengthen ties between humanitarian and development work.
UNICEF is supporting the implementation of the 2023 inter-agency Joint Response Plan for Rohingya refugees and will be a key contributor to the 2024 Plan. UNICEF will support the inter-sectoral coordination group in streamlining sector activities, focusing on promoting collaborations and partnerships to fill in gaps in the current response and improve the quality of service delivery, to enhance efficiency and operational effectiveness in the camps.
In line with Grand Bargain commitments and in response to the local context and opportunities, localization is of key importance in the Rohingya response (as well as in the national disaster response strategy). UNICEF works to to strengthen the capacity of local actors to take a greater and more predictable leadership role in humanitarian response, including on humanitarian principles, safeguarding and increasing their influence in the partnership and the response – including through improved resource mobilization. UNICEF has achieved significant progress in itslocalization efforts, increasing the proportion of national and local non-governmetal partners from 54 per cent in 2021 to 71 per cent in 2023. In partnership with the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief and national civil society organizations, UNICEF will strengthen national and subnational emergency structures charged with emergency preparedness and response and continue piloting new and innovative approaches to disaster preparedness and response, including the Today and Tomorrow Initiative (a parametric insurance disaster risk financing scheme); use of Central Emergency Response Fund anticipatory action resources for floods and cyclones responses; and humanitarian cash transfers.
UNICEF continues to foster multisectoral collaboration and integration to ensure that people receive an integrated package of high-impact interventions in disaster response. As the co-lead of the national accountability to affected populations working group, UNICEF will enhance focus on such accountability in humanitarian action and promote a harmonized and efficient approach to it.
UNICEF will contribute to the Humanitarian Coordination Task Team, the inter-sectoral coordination team and the disaster risk reduction, accountability to affected populations and risk communication and community engagement working groups. As the cluster lead for the Nutrition, WASH, and Education Clusters and the Child Protection subcluster, UNICEF will prioritize gender responsiveness, inclusion, protection from sexual exploitation and abuse and participation and community engagement to ensure the participation of women, girls and persons with disabilities in decision-making.
Programme targets
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Highlights
Humanitarian Action is at the core of UNICEF’s mandate to realize the rights of every child. This edition of Humanitarian Action for Children – UNICEF’s annual humanitarian fundraising appeal – describes the ongoing crises affecting children in Bangladesh; the strategies that we are using to respond to these situations; and the donor support that is essential in this response.