[Myanmar WPS position paper] Collective Voice, Shared Security: Women’s Organizations of Burma/Myanmar on Women, Peace and Security Agenda

2 March 2026

Rationale

This paper bears witness to the widespread atrocities, deepening levels of poverty, and intersectional insecurities against women, girls, and gender-diverse people across Myanmar/Burma five years after the brutal failed coup of February 2021. It centers on the lived experiences of women and girls to expose the brutal cost of inaction and the failure to uphold the promises enshrined in international law and global commitments to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda. This paper also bears witness to the proactiveness of women’s groups across Myanmar who are providing lifesaving humanitarian support and demanding accountability. They are calling on ASEAN Member States to meet their obligations under CEDAW, the WPS Framework consisting of UNSC 1325 and its sister resolutions, and uphold the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action (RPA) on WPS. This WPS case study, juxtaposes the ASEAN WPS RPA’s strategic objectives with the reality of WPS situation in Myanmar, revealing the urgent need to move beyond policy rhetoric toward concrete action.

Context

Five years after the failed coup of February 2021 in Myanmar, the junta has dismantled a decade of quasi-democratic transition and triggered nationwide resistance. Mass civil disobedience alongside a widespread armed confrontation between the military and Ethnic Resistance Organizations (EROs), newly formed People’s Defence Forces (PDFs), and Local Defence Forces (LDFs), each determined to dismantle the military and end the authoritarianism. By 2025, armed conflict had engulfed nearly two-thirds of the country ranking it as the second most dangerous and violent country on the ACLED’s Global Conflict Index, after Palestine. Myanmar’s military has perpetrated widespread armed offensives, systematic human rights violations, forced mass displacement, and grave sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), disproportionately affecting women and girls.

Now, over 3.6 million people in Myanmar are internally displaced and nearly one-third of the population requires humanitarian assistance. The UN’s 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan estimates that over 16 million people, including five million children, are in urgent need of lifesaving assistance and protection. Food insecurity in Myanmar is deteriorating, with over 400,000 children and mothers currently suffering from acute malnutrition. The World Food Program projects that approximately 12 million people in Myanmar will experience acute hunger in 2026, estimating emergency levels to reach at least one million people.

Myanmar’s economy has contracted sharply, with cumulative GDP losses exceeding 20% compared to pre-coup projections in 2019. Formal employment has collapsed as businesses closed, foreign investment left, and persistent attacks by the Myanmar military on civilian sites proved a high risk of doing business, while electricity outages disrupt economic activities.

In this context of structural violence carried out by the junta, economic contraction has resulted in many people, particularly young people and displaced communities, resorting to out-migration as a coping strategy. While some reach safety, others are trafficked into scam compounds where exploitative conditions amount to crimes against humanity, including forced criminality, forced labour, and sexual abuse. The Myanmar military and affiliated Border Guard Forces and militias profit from Myanmar’s role as the epic-center of scam operations.

The strides made in the WPS agenda over the last decade were abruptly dismantled following the Myanmar military’s failed coup in 2021. The military’s actions, which amount to international crimes, have subjected women and girls to widespread and multifaceted insecurity stemming from structural violence, sexual violence, and mass atrocities, manifested in airstrikes, artillery shellings, and ground offensives. Further, Rohingya women and girls face ‘parallel systems of persecution’, even after the 2017 mass atrocities, and are currently trapped between junta repression and the armed conflict between the Arakan Army and the junta in Rakhine State, as well as the Arakan Army’s ongoing human rights violations and mass atrocities. Their marginalization reflects the intersection of ethnicity, religion, gender, and legal exclusion.

This WPS position paper is endorsed by 43 organizations and networks working for Myanmar, including one organization working for persons with disabilities that prefers to remain anonymous.

Download full position paper (English)