UN agencies in Myanmar are facing a test of their principles and resolve.
Since the military coup in February 2021, the UN agencies have seriously failed to assist the Myanmar people, who have been systematically targeted and terrorized by the military. Now they have a new chance to improve their record. Alternatively, they can once more fail without any excuses.
Myanmar is one of the countries, together with southern China, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, that have been heavily hit by Typhoon Yagi and the subsequent floods. Despite the junta’s announcement of 268 deaths and 88 missing as of Wednesday, other estimates suggest at least 1,000 civilians are dead or missing in Mandalay and Bago regions and Shan and Karenni states. Over 700,000 people in 59 townships in nine regions and states are affected. Houses, roads, bridges, farmland and livestock have been destroyed in the floods and landslides. There is an urgent need for food, drinking water, medicine, clothes and shelter.
This is happening in a country in which there are already over 3 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and one third of the overall population of 55 million have fallen below the poverty line, mainly due to the three-and-a-half years the military junta has spent burning villages, bombing cities and destroying the people’s livelihoods. In Myanmar dictatorship jargon this is called the “4 Cuts” strategy. Elsewhere people call it “scorched earth”.
As is always the case in Myanmar, grass-roots social organizations, local communities and volunteers have immediately mobilized, with whatever meagre resources they have, to save lives, provide relief and to assist with recovery.
At the same time, the military has continued to bomb the cities and villages, and to undertake murderous raids. The junta has been also quick to capture any humanitarian aid which might be coming from outside, sent by India or by ASEAN or collected locally, to try to advance its own propaganda, military and political agenda. The junta has made a formal request for international aid. Dr. Sasa, minister for international cooperation in Myanmar’s parallel National Unity Government, pointed to a similar demand back in 2008 after Cyclone Nargis killed more than 100,000 people. Authorities used the relief provided by other countries as weapons, Sasa told France 24. Now, faced once more with the disastrous confluence of junta-made and natural catastrophes, the UN agencies and international aid community have critical choices to make. Emergency needs are huge and available financial resources are far below what is needed.
One possible choice is to continue to engage the military junta; do a little bit of aid here and there, as allowed by the junta, while secretly channeling small amounts to local organizations without the junta’s knowledge; let junta-affiliated structures use aid for their own propaganda or profit or both; accept that aid funds will be exchanged at the junta-imposed exchange rate, which is far below the real market price, and wait obediently for their permission for greater humanitarian access. In other words facilitate the junta’s weaponization of aid.
The other approach is to admit that the current, traditional mode of operating does not work and will not work with the military junta, and that it is unrealistic to continue to think that any relationship with and appeasement of the junta will improve humanitarian access.
Myanmar is full of community-based organisations (CBOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) that have been supporting communities throughout Myanmar for over 30 years and during the revolution. If the international aid business is honest it knows that local aid structures are more effective and cost-efficient with more support going to those most in need rather than the junta.
International organizations need to move the center of gravity of their operations outside Yangon and Naypyitaw, where they are held hostage by the junta for aid access, memorandums of understanding and visas for expat staff.
Aid funds should be channeled directly to the local organizations operating across the country as well as through cross-border channels. International non-government organisations (INGOs), when necessary, can act as intermediaries between big donors and local organizations and networks, to support documentation and reporting. This of course will reduce the operational budgets of international organizations and reduce their footprint in the country, which many will resist, but it is something most of them signed up to as part of the Grand Bargain—an agreement between humanitarian aid organizations and donors to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian aid, launched in May 2016 at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul.
Even more importantly, major international donors should finally make a bold decision and significantly scale up funding for service-providing structures of the NUG and ethnic organizations. They are the ones who have the real legitimacy. They are the ones that have the trust and cooperation of the population. They are the ones who see the civilian population not as an enemy that needs to be suppressed and terrorized into obedience, but as citizens whom they should protect and serve.
Currently it is largely revolutionary organizations that control Myanmar’s borders with China, India, Thailand and Bangladesh. Therefore, cross-border aid is no longer dependent on the junta. The obstacle is the unwillingness of neighboring countries to give access to its borders for the transportation of humanitarian aid, which would involve agreements with ethnic resistance organisations (EROs). The major international donors need to have a series of talks with the four aforementioned neighboring countries to expedite this. Success with China is very unlikely but Thailand is already discussing coordinating with EROs for aid delivery. It makes sense as more aid to Myanmar will probably mean fewer refugees. India has had talks with the Arakan Army (AA) after they took Paletwa in Chin State because of the stalled Kaladan Highway project, and Bangladesh has a new more humanitarian leader who also doesn’t want any more refugees.
Once the aid starts to flow from any of the neighboring countries, be it India, Thailand or Bangladesh, the other two will be much more willing to follow. Once at least two of them have opened their borders for international aid, I assume that China will not want to stay behind for too long. There is a chance that Beijing will also want to jump on the departing train pulled by the soft power of international and regional aid.
What I have said here does not mean that all UN agencies and international organizations should leave Yangon and Naypyitaw. Some of the international aid agencies should stay in Yangon and continue to make an effort to operate through appeasement of the junta, but that should not account for more than 30 to 40 percent of available international aid funds. Some 60 to 70 percent of aid money should without any delay be taken out and channeled into the country through INGOs as intermediaries who will, with no excessive overheads, channel it to local organizations.
Once this starts to happen in a substantial way and the State Administration Council (the junta) realizes it is not able to control aid funding any more, the generals will themselves allow far greater access to communities in their areas of control.
Once serious and meaningful competition emerges, the junta will also try to keep aid money in the territory it still controls. However, right now the SAC will need to let that money be used for deliveries, if they want to persuade the UN agencies and INGOs to stay and work in Myanmar.
