Myanmar Civil Society Is Right to Criticize the UN on Aid Distribution

By Igor Blazevic 26 September 2022

DW Asia editor Rodion Ebbighausen has written an opinion piece through which he argues that “Myanmar activists are attacking the incorrect goal”. “Activists and civil society teams in Myanmar are more and more attacking humanitarian help organizations, particularly the United Nations, on-line. They’re the incorrect goal,” says Ebbighausen within the DW article.

Let me rapidly touch upon why Ebbighausen’s protection of the UN companies is incorrect and why the UN companies are coming beneath deserved public scrutiny and criticism.

What Ebbighausen is overlooking is that no UN companies have signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with the legit Nationwide Unity Authorities (NUG), which doesn’t deliberately and systematically kill the civilian inhabitants and uproot them from the land.

Nevertheless, all related UN companies (OCHA, UNICEF, ICRC, FAO and IOM) have concurrently signed MoUs with the illegitimate power-usurper, which is deliberately and systematically executing cleaning operations and terror over the civilian inhabitants.

They’ve signed MoUs with a power that’s waging a conflict, not towards guerrillas, however towards the civilian inhabitants. They’ve signed an “understanding” with the identical power and the identical people who find themselves truly making a humanitarian emergency and utilizing brutal violence to expel the inhabitants from the land.

As well as, the army junta—after 19 months through which the individuals have mounted a heroic self-defense operation—presently controls solely about half of the nation’s territory. There’s a lengthy historical past of the junta utilizing a “4 Cuts” coverage, which implies reducing the civilian inhabitants off from meals, provides, medicines, gasoline and anything to be able to blackmail the insurgency into conceding defeat by the heavy worth imposed on the civilian inhabitants. The army did that for many years and is doing it now.

So as soon as the UN companies signal an MoU with the junta, they agree that they won’t ship help to half of the territory the place the scenario is essentially the most dramatic and urgency is the best. If on the similar time there may be not a single UN company that has signed an settlement with the NUG and Ethnic Revolutionary Organizations (EROs) about delivering much-needed help to non-junta managed territory as nicely, then what we’ve is UN companies helping the brutal counterinsurgency operations of the junta.

This can be a downside and this can be a huge downside, and that’s the reason the UN companies are coming beneath deserved public scrutiny and criticism.

Low cost, pathetic arguments about “a ravenous youngster receiving meals doesn’t starve to loss of life” mustn’t conceal this ugly actuality. There’s a systematic, murderous and brutal counterinsurgency operation happening within the rural areas of the nation. That is being completed by the army junta. This should be stopped. This can be a humanitarian crucial.

If that’s an excessive amount of for the UN to do, then not less than the UN companies should be on each side of the battle strains, and never solely on the aspect of the aggressor.

Activists and civil society teams, in addition to the individuals of Myanmar, are rightly outraged as a result of the UN companies have signed an understanding with the junta and haven’t made any settlement that help can even be delivered to the NUG- and ERO-liberated territories.

Myanmar society has sufficient dedication and energy to defend itself from the tried army energy seize. Myanmar society and its personal civil society even have sufficient dedication and capability to maintain beneath scrutiny what the UN companies are doing—and what they aren’t doing.

The UN has an extended historical past of failures in Myanmar. The 2019 Rosenthal Report analyzed and highlighted “systemic and structural failures” of the UN companies through the Rohingya genocide in 2017. The identical army beneath the identical command construction that dedicated the crime of genocide in 2017 in Rakhine State is now making use of the identical cleaning operations in different elements of Myanmar. The UN companies have clearly not realized something from their very own earlier failures. The individuals of Myanmar have realized. They’ve realized sufficient to know that they’ve just one solution to achieve safety, peace, growth, rights and freedom, and that’s by liberating themselves from predatory and repressive army rule.

They’ve additionally realized sufficient concerning the humanitarian neocolonialism of the UN companies. That’s the reason the UN companies will get pushback from Myanmar society at any time when they begin to do hurt. The UN companies have began strolling down the very slippery highway of doing extra hurt than profit.

Myanmar civil society is ringing alarm bells. The UN companies would do nicely to listen to these alarm bells, and to not make themselves blind and deaf, hiding behind an argument that it’s fulfilling a “humanitarian dedication that may alleviate the struggling of the individuals”.

In locations like Myanmar, the place the junta (and solely the junta) has weaponized humanitarian help, it isn’t sufficient to say that one is “assuaging the struggling of the individuals”. One should be extra exact and say the place the help goes and the place the help shouldn’t be going, and why. It additionally issues so much when the help is delivered and when it isn’t delivered, and why. It additionally issues by whom the help comes and thru whom it doesn’t come.

At this second UN companies have dedicated themselves to ship help the place the junta desires them to ship it, to ship it when the junta permits them to ship it, and to do it by constructions which are affiliated with the junta—the identical junta that’s the sole and solely supply of all struggling and of the humanitarian emergency.

That is rightly criticized.

Igor Blazevic is senior adviser with the Prague Civil Society Centre. Between 2011 and 2016 he labored in Myanmar as the top lecturer on the Academic Initiatives Program.