The WFP has reported a 60% drop in its worldwide funding this year compared with 2024, and says it can feed only 20% of those in Myanmar facing severe food insecurity. In March, it was forced to cut aid to Rakhine despite a dramatic rise since the beginning of the year in the number of families unable to support themselves. "People are trapped in a vicious cycle - cut off by conflict, stripped of livelihoods, and left with no humanitarian safety net," said Michael Dunford, the WFP Representative in Myanmar. "We are hearing heartbreaking stories of children crying from hunger and mothers skipping meals. Families are doing everything they can, but they cannot survive this alone." Rakhine was already badly affected by the violence in 2012, and then the killing and mass expulsion of Rohingyas in 2017. Then in 2023 the military blocked all trade and transport routes to the rest of the country to try to cut supplies to the Arakan Army, an insurgent group that has advanced quickly to take over most of the state. Sittwe is now besieged and accessible only by sea and air. Farmers have given up harvesting their rice crops because they can no longer access buyers. Rohingyas are barred by the military from going to sea to fish, one of their few sources of food and income. And even when they have funding, international aid agencies cannot get to most of the areas now controlled by the Arakan Army. ''People can't go out. There are no jobs. Prices have increased fivefold," one camp resident told the BBC. "There is no income, so they are really struggling to make ends meet. Most people survive now by eating boiled taro roots." The military's demand for conscripts to fight against the Arakan Army has imposed an additional burden. Thousands of Rohingya men have been enlisted to help defend Sittwe, and those families who have not sent a man to join up must help pay to support those who have.