Two years since Myanmar’s coup: it is time for USAID to meet its localisation commitments

February 1st marked two years since Myanmar’s devastating military coup. Thanks to the Burmese people’s heroic resistance, the junta has lost control over more than half of the country, but has retaliated with a scorched earth campaign of indiscriminate massacres and airstrikes. Myanmar faces a humanitarian crisis – an estimated 18 million people need urgent assistance. Like democracy activists, aid workers are in the military’s crosshairs. The military is blocking sources of aid to suffocate opposition, requiring that the aid agencies work through them, and restricting access to the local population. Networks crossing Myanmar’s borders – outside the regime’s control – offer the most readily available path to alleviating escalating humanitarian suffering.

What is happening in Myanmar

Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis is most dire along its borders. There are over 1.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and 72,000 refugees in neighbouring countries. They struggle to receive assistance due to the junta’s aid blockades and lack of formal aid distribution programmes. This crisis is intensified because Thailand, India and Bangladesh continue to restrict cross-border aid. Myanmar’s military, a most unreliable ‘partner’, demands international assistance flow through it, which it inevitably steals or misuses. The military has proven it is an illegitimate actor through ceaseless repression of the Burmese people, genocide of Rohingya and an obstinate refusal to share power. Engaging with the military only invites more death, destruction and instability. Cross-border assistance would reach those desperately in need along Myanmar’s borders without allowing the junta to block or abuse aid delivery.

History of cross-border aid in Myanmar

Neither delivery of cross-border aid nor collaboration with non-state actors on the ground are new to Myanmar. After the military seized power in 1988 and until a partial opening up in 2010, Myanmar was a totalitarian regime. Indigenous community networks across Myanmar’s porous 1,500-mile border provided numerous entry points for informal aid delivery. Funds, technical assistance and supplies flowed across the border with the support of non-state and local civil society that often involved Ethnic Resistance Organisations (EROs). International donors and aid organisations operated, mostly in neighbouring Thailand, to provide assistance without endorsing the regime, and instead built lasting relationships with a range of local actors including community members, EROs and civil society.

Cross-border assistance works

A sterling example of cross-border aid is the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot on the Thailand–Myanmar border. For 30 years, Dr Cynthia Maung and her team have made healthcare accessible to refugees and IDPs amidst the war across the border, treating malaria and diarrhoea, as well as gunshot and landmine injuries. Initiatives like this take advantage of the border rather than operating outside it. One of the clinic’s success stories is the Back Pack Health Worker Team that builds grassroots healthcare knowledge and capability by sending mobile medical teams to conflict areas of Myanmar out of reach of international humanitarian organisations. Ethnic community-based initiatives have also been providing essential services for decades, including health and education to populations in ERO-administered regions, as well as those in refugee camps along the Thailand–Myanmar borders. For example, the Karen National Union’s Karen Education and Culture Department is serving more than 90,000 students across more than 1,000 schools, filling the necessary gap of education provision during times of conflict and when the state education system is hardly operational. Investing in local capacity ensures inclusive and sustainable impacts that help end reliance on the illegitimate military regime for access to aid.

The door for USAID’s localisation agenda is open

The need for cross-border humanitarian assistance is growing along with the military’s atrocities and criminal mismanagement of Myanmar’s economy and social services. Current cross-border assistance, in spite of the heroic efforts of Dr Cynthia Maung and others, is not adequate or sustainable in the face of compounding humanitarian crises. The key is ‘localisation’ of aid – humanitarian agencies and institutional donors must directly fund local groups doing life-saving work.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has pledged to localise aid and has established relationships with neighbouring governments with formal aid networks and resources. This empowers local actors to set agendas, develop solutions, and strengthen and deploy capacity, leadership and resources. USAID can help partner countries meet their own development and humanitarian assistance challenges – saving the lives of vulnerable IDPs and refugees – while also ensuring that taxpayer investments produce sustainable, long-term development outcomes, not only in Myanmar but around the world.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power is determined to achieve localisation: ‘Shifting to a model of locally-led development means ceding power over decision making to those who know their problems best.’ For Administrator Power, localisation means sending a larger portion of development and humanitarian assistance directly to local civil society supported by and accountable to local communities. She vowed that 25% of USAID direct funding will go to local entities in the next three years – up from 6.2% in 2021 – and that half of USAID projects over the next 10 years will empower local partners to co-design projects, set priorities, lead implementation and evaluate the impact of aid.

How localisation of assistance will save lives in Myanmar

Local humanitarian actors, being closest to the people, are best at fundraising, mobilising with appropriate caution and channelling assistance into Myanmar through well-established networks that have been built over the years of resistance before the coup. Their efforts – and shared commitment to toppling the regime – build a foundation of trust for more effective assistance. Supporting these humanitarian networks ramps up existing local humanitarian efforts on the borders of Myanmar to not only save lives but prepare citizens to effectively contribute in building a future democratic Myanmar.

Myanmar’s neighbours can and must do more

International donors must step up engagement with the National Unity Government – the rightful opposition and democratic government of Myanmar – and the humanitarian wings of EROs committed to overthrowing the regime. Increased engagement by the US and like-minded countries with Thailand, India and Bangladesh, along with donor support for the already active local networks, could enable aid to reach tens if not hundreds of thousands more people desperately in need. Myanmar’s neighbours should work with local actors and the humanitarian and health agencies of EROs to facilitate aid to areas accessible across borders. EROs and the civil society organisations along the borders are ready and willing implementation partners. Donor governments and international agencies seeking to alleviate suffering and spiralling instability in Myanmar must remind Thailand, India and Bangladesh that it is in their interest to provide support to local actors already providing life-saving aid.

The BURMA Act and the way forward

President Biden’s signing of the BURMA Act on 23 December 2022 marked a new era and opportunity for assistance to Myanmar. The bill authorises the type of localised, cross-border aid that is urgently needed. It is now up to Congress to properly fund it and USAID and its partners to implement it. Myanmar’s democratic forces have made tremendous progress on a self-financed, shoestring budget. The people’s will is undeniable. The military ‘controls less than a quarter of Myanmar’s territory’. Not only is the military losing, it cannot win. With a small investment, the US can change the course of Myanmar. With the support of funding from the BURMA Act, a whole network of clinics, like Dr Cynthia Maung’s, as well as schools administered by EROs or institutes of higher education like Spring University Myanmar, could not only help address a humanitarian crisis, but could also help the Burmese people realise their dream of a stable and democratic Myanmar.