About the author(s):
Lway Mownt Noon is an ethnic civil society activist and a researcher focusing on identity politics and geopolitics of Myanmar. Noon has worked on human rights for over 18 years, with a focus on women, children, and political prisoners. Noon was born under an armed conflict and is a victim of trafficking. She also has first-hand experience of being in IDP camps, refugee camps, and being held as a political prisoner. Noon holds a degree in International Relations and a Master's degree in Development Studies. Noon acts as a watchdog to the Myanmar military, ethnic armed organisations, and people's defence forces in Myanmar.
Samantha Holmes is a Research Associate at the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) and York Law School. She is also a member of the Beyond Compliance Consortium’s research programme “Building Evidence on Promoting Restraint by Armed Actors”. Her ongoing research explores the impacts of war on mental wellbeing and the vulnerabilities of children in war. She has also collaborated with Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict to research grave violations against children. Samantha holds an LLM in International Human Rights Law and Practice from the University of York, and an LLB from Queen Mary University of London.
Chris Rush
Chris Rush is the researcher focusing on Burma/Myanmar for the Generating Respect Project. He has a background in forced displacement and humanitarian assistance. From 1992 to 2006 he worked for a number of organszations assisting refugees and internally displaced people in the United Kingdom, Thailand and Sri Lanka before working in various roles in Asia for Geneva Call for the next decade. He led Geneva Call’s work in Burma/Myanmar for six years, including its humanitarian engagement of over a dozen non-state armed groups. He is currently a consultant, and has undertaken a number of humanitarian and human rights assignments in Burma/Myanmar and other countries.
Dr Florian Weigand is Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups and a Research Associate at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on conflict zones, borderlands and other complex environments, how they function and are governed. Florian is the author of 'Waiting for Dignity: Legitimacy and Authority in Afghanistan' (Columbia University Press, 2022) and 'Conflict and Transnational Crime: Borders, Bullets & Business in Southeast Asia' (Edward Elgar, 2020). He also is the co-editor of the 'Routledge Handbook of Smuggling' (Routledge, 2021).
This post forms part of phase two of the Beyond Compliance Symposium: How to Prevent Harm and Need in Conflict, hosted by the Armed Groups and International Law blog. The introductory post can be found here. The symposium invites reflection on the conceptualisation of negative everyday lived experiences of armed conflict, and legal and extra-legal strategies that can effectively address both civilian harm and humanitarian need.
On 28 March 2025, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck central Myanmar, causing immense devastation across vast swathes of an already war-torn country. While attention focused on urban centres under control of the military junta, the State Administration Council (SAC), little was initially known about the situation in contested and resistance-controlled rural communities in Sagaing, Mandalay, and Southern Shan. This post is based on direct observations by one of our team members who visited the affected zones, where ongoing conflict and a deadly natural disaster have collided to create a humanitarian emergency. The earthquake has compounded existing harm + need, exposing how little help is reaching affected communities. While International Humanitarian Law (IHL) does not seek to regulate the response to natural disasters, this post will reflect on norms of IHL that are rendered ever more pivotal when natural disasters magnify risks and exacerbate the harm + need caused during conflict.
© Local citizen journalist
Conflict in Myanmar
Myanmar’s ongoing conflict – or rather conflicts – represents one of the most complex and multifaceted crises in Southeast Asia. Since its independence in 1948, the country has been marked by ethnic marginalisation, political instability, international isolation, and frequent armed clashes between (and at times, among) various ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and the central government. The military coup in February 2021, in which the military seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government, escalated these conflicts, triggering widespread civil unrest and resistance across the country. In this context, also many new types of armed resistance groups – so called People’s Defence Force (PDF) – were formed across the country.
Since the coup, widespread abuses by the SAC have been documented. These include attacks targetting civilians, not least the systematic burning of villages, indiscriminate airstrikes, obstruction of humanitarian aid, the use of human shields, attacks on schools, arbitrary arrests, torture, grave violations against children, and extrajudicial killings, many of which may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes. In some cases, also non-state armed groups are drivers of harm + need, both in the battlefield and as governing authorities.
Rural Communities Devastated, Casualties Underreported
The already dire humanitarian situation has been exacerbated by the March 2025 earthquake and its hundreds of succeeding aftershocks which killed at least 3,800 and displaced over 200,000 people, razed vital infrastructure to the ground and caused catastrophic damage to entire villages in contested and resistance-controlled areas. In some areas, up to 80% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Around Inle Lake, where homes were built on or near the water, many residents drowned when structures collapsed. Local responders lacked even the most basic resources, such as body bags, to cope with the scale of the disaster. According to a flash addendum to Myanmar’s Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan, the earthquake has increased the estimate of people in urgent need of assistance and protection by 2 million, to 6.3 million.
In towns like Mandalay and Sagaing, medical facilities were quickly overwhelmed. In rural areas, where access to healthcare was already limited, the situation has been even worse. Water systems and sanitation infrastructure have been severely damaged, increasing the risk of disease outbreaks. The visible scale of destruction strongly suggests that official media reports are significantly underestimating both the scale and human toll of the crisis, particularly in remote areas.
Information Suppression
The full extent of the crisis is hard to grasp precisely because the SAC tightly controls information. Our team member observed mobile phone checks at checkpoints, where soldiers deleted photos to prevent documentation of the destruction. Combined with electricity outages and internet shutdowns, these restrictions have created an information blackout that severely undermines both national awareness and international response efforts.
Continued SAC attacks
Despite being an opportunity, albeit a cynical one, for a nationwide de-escalation of the conflict, most armed actors in Myanmar continued to fight in the wake of the earthquake. Earthquake survivors faced immediate and ongoing airstrikes from the SAC. An airstrike in Nawnghkio, Shan State, was reported a few mere minutes after the earthquake struck and multiple airstrikes were reported during the national mourning period. Despite the SAC’s announcement of a temporary ceasefire starting on 2 April, later extended until 31 May, in practice it continued its systematic campaign of airstrikes. For example, credible accounts point to a school being hit in the village of Oe Htein Kwin, reportedly killing 20 children and two teachers. ISP-Myanmar reported that, within two weeks following the earthquake SAC airstrikes surpassed 160 across 39 townships; 47% of which occurred in breach of a temporary ceasefire.
While the destruction caused by the earthquake is independent of the harm + need attributable to conflict parties, the compounding nature of the harm + need from both sources has legal implications. IHL requires parties to conflict to consider the foreseeable harm their violence could inflict on civilians and civilian objects, to take precautions against such harm and to ensure that harm is not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated (the principles of precaution and proportionality).
The assessment of proportionality is inherently contextual, meaning that armed actors must consider the specific circumstances of the community that may be harmed on the basis of all sources of information available to the military commander at the time prior to the initiation of an attack. It follows that military decisions in disaster-affected environments must consider the chaotic conditions imposed by disasters themselves as well as disaster-induced vulnerabilities. Attacks that may have been determined as proportionate prior to a natural disaster may fail to comply with the principle of proportionality, if launched after the disaster, in light of the impact of the disaster on civilians.
The knowledge of the devastating impacts of the earthquake in Myanmar and how an armed attack could foreseeably compound existing harm + need from the earthquake, as well as the understanding that natural disasters are likely to increase conflict risks and heighten civilian vulnerability, is therefore information that ought to be considered in decisions of attack.
Trauma and Fear
Beyond the physical destruction, communities have also experienced deep psychological trauma. UNHCR’s 26 June 2025 flash update on the Myanmar earthquake highlighted that mental health and psychosocial support needs remain a significant concern among the affected population, with high levels of trauma observed. Repeated aftershocks for many weeks have left many terrified. Many people are sleeping outdoors, exposed to the elements and lacking even the most basic shelter or security. In resistance-held areas, earthquake fears are compounded by the threat of SAC airstrikes which continued unabated, including in these disaster-affected areas.
One person we talked to described the dilemma people were facing in these areas: “People have to make an impossible choice between seeking shelter from airstrikes and staying outside to keep safe from aftershocks.” The intersection of protracted conflict and sudden-onset disaster is generating layered forms of harm + need, including at material, psychological, and societal levels.
In some towns, the recovery phase is incomplete: bodies reportedly remain buried beneath the rubble, preventing families from recovering the remains of loved ones and carrying out traditional burial rites which is adding to the emotional distress.
Impeding Humanitarian Aid
Humanitarian access to affected areas has been severely limited. Aid has mostly been distributed in cities and larger towns, leaving rural communities to fend for themselves. There are also credible reports of aid materials being confiscated by the military as well as food assistance being diverted and sold on the black market by private individuals associated with the SAC.
One key barrier to disaster response in conflict contexts occurs where parties are concerned that relief efforts will benefit their adversaries. This can result in aid mismanagement or instrumentalisation, such as State militaries exerting control over humanitarian relief efforts and personnel in order to prevent aid from reaching citizens in ‘enemy’ controlled areas to further their political or military objectives – as has been the case in Myanmar. The SAC has limited the access for international aid actors to resistance-controlled areas. International humanitarian agencies, including the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and UNDP, are operating under severe restrictions. Permissions are required for every movement, and access to non-SAC areas is often impossible. Insecurity Insight reports criticisms that earthquake aid has been funnelled through the SAC: ‘All the donation money that ends up in MA’s [Myanmar Army’s] hands is like pouring water into desert sand—not a single coin reaches the people’. SAC’s weaponisation of humanitarian aid is not a novel critique restricted to the post-earthquake context, rather observers allege that this is a well-rehearsed tactic utilised since 2008.
A key norm of IHL, especially relevant in such contexts, is the obligation for parties to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need – enshrined for non-international armed conflicts in Article 18(2) of the Second Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (APII) and also considered customary international law (See, ICRC Customary Law Study, Rule 55). The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has noted the applicability of IHL requirements to allow and facilitate aid in situations of armed conflict where aid is in response to needs generated by an intervening disaster (not the conflict directly). The language of IHL instruments does not tether the need for aid to only circumstances attributable to fighting, but, in the case of APII, simply to situations where ‘the civilian population is suffering undue hardship owing to a lack of the supplies essential for its survival’. Thus it is the need of the civilian population that is decisive, not what the cause of that need is.
While APII also requires all humanitarian relief to be subject to the consent of the parties concerned, it is argued that arbitrary refusals of consent are barred. Customary law also acknowledges that consent cannot be refused on arbitrary grounds and infers an obligation to give consent where the civilian population is under threat of starvation and an impartial humanitarian organisation is able to remedy the situation. It further indicates that ‘each party to the conflict must refrain from deliberately impeding the delivery of relief supplies to civilians in need in areas under its control’ (Rule 55).
Notably the instrumentalisation or exploitation of the effects of a natural disaster to achieve military advantage could in theory be considered an inherent violation of another norm of IHL – the principle of distinction. It could be argued that in blocking humanitarian relief the SAC ‘effectively assumes responsibility for the disaster’s effects as if they were part of its own military strategy’.
Local Solidarity
In the face of aid blockages, local solidarity has been the backbone of the response to the earthquake. Business people, citizens, and diaspora communities mobilised quickly to send donations and supplies. But the SAC imposed new restrictions shortly after the earthquake, blocking many of these efforts. In some cases, volunteers trying to reach towns like Sagaing were turned back. Others trying to help in contested areas faced threats, surveillance, and arrest, underscoring both the urgency and challenges faced by local efforts in the absence of broader support.
Community-driven initiatives for community-building and healing in response to the earthquake illustrate the importance of local solidarity and civilian self protection in times of compounding harm + need where IHL and its implementation proves inadequate to respond to the suffering on the ground. Such initiatives also serve as a reminder of the broad scope of needs that have arisen in Myanmar, extending beyond immediate survival and including collective mental wellbeing and social cohesion.
What Needs to Change
The current response is failing Myanmar’s most vulnerable communities. To address this, three urgent shifts are needed:
1. Accountability. International actors must hold the SAC accountable for violations of its own commitments and ensure that attacks in disaster-affected areas are halted.
2. Prioritise support for areas outside SAC-control. These zones are unlikely to receive meaningful assistance through official channels. Aid must be channelled through local governance structures and trusted networks on the ground.
3. Invest in long-term recovery, not just short-term relief. Assistance must go beyond immediate needs. Rebuilding efforts should address both physical infrastructure and psychological trauma. Funding should be flexible, contextualised, and light on bureaucracy so that local actors can respond quickly and effectively.
4. Recovery and relief should acknowledge the disaster-conflict nexus. Assistance in response to needs stemming from the conflict and the earthquake should not be siloed. They should be coordinated and complimentary. Assistance should further integrate needs in relation to monsoon preparedness as monsoon season is expected to aggravate the harm + need experienced in Myanmar even further.
A Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight
What has been unfolding in rural Myanmar is a natural crisis made worse by conflict, information suppression, and aid blockades and anticipated to worsen still with the onset of the monsoon season. Without swift and coordinated action, need and harm can only deepen. A long-term response is required to address the structural and political barriers that continue to put lives at risk in Myanmar.