Displaced Myanmar women are turning cash assistance into businesses, jobs and community support

Most evenings, Ma Char stands over a large wok balanced on a small wood-fired stove, frying bright yellow chickpea tofu. It’s a Myanmar street food staple that she prepares as fritters – crispy on the outside and soft in the middle – or fried into thin, crispy, bubbled sheets. The tofu crackles and hisses while her children pack the finished products, ready to sell at the next day’s markets. The smoke settles into the walls of their house, and into their hair and clothes. 

“Frying tofu releases a strong smell as we produce hundreds of packages,” she says, with a laugh. “But we love the smell and the sound. It is what supports our family’s survival here.”

In 2023, conflict forced Ma Char and her family to leave their village in Kachin State, loading what they could onto motorbikes. She and her husband, a pastor, now share a rented house in town far from home with their extended family of 15, including their biological children, three they have adopted, and elderly grandparents. After accessing cash assistance through a joint UN Women and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) project funded by the Government of France, she bought better cooking tools and ingredients, increased production, reached new customers, and hired two other displaced women from the community to help. Ma Char has built a steady income stream that covers school fees, food and rent, and created some stability for her family in an unfamiliar place.

"I feel grateful to be able to support not only my family but also the women around me," she says. 

Myanmar's crisis is among the most underfunded humanitarian emergencies in the world. In 2026, 3.7 million people are displaced, and more than half are women and girls. With men frequently absent – they may be killed in conflict or stay behind in conflict-affected villages to protect land and property – women are left as primary caregivers and breadwinners, often with fewer assets, less access to markets and less financial security. 

UN Women and UNFPA have combined economic empowerment, including livelihoods support, business skills and flexible cash assistance, with life-saving protection services including gender-based violence support and safe referral pathways. More than 500 women have received cash assistance so far and the project reflects that in crisis settings, women's economic recovery and their safety cannot be addressed in isolation. 

Naw Yin Mwae and her family also fled their village in 2023. 

“Our area lost its peace and quiet,” she says. “Fighting would break out, then settle down – again and again.” 

Initially, her husband found work on a chicken farm, but his income could not cover the needs of their family of nine, so she returned to bamboo trading, a business she had run successfully for years in her home village. But restarting required loans, and with unpredictable bamboo prices and transport fees at checkpoints, she was soon trapped in debt. Flexible cash assistance helped her clear those debts, cover her family’s rent, school fees and healthcare, and begin employing her neighbours.

Neither Naw Yin Mwae nor Ma Char knows when they will be able to go home, but both draw strength from knowing they are keeping their families together, safe and fed, while supporting others beyond their own households.

Ma Char says she feels most proud on the days when she has paid the bills, put food on the table, and helped support other women in the community. Her ambition is to establish a “Bhamo Family restaurant”, serving the sour noodles and fried dumplings of her home village. Her plan is gradually taking shape alongside the sizzling wok and the sweet pungent smoke that curls through the house each evening, signalling that tomorrow, at least, is taken care of. 

*This story was originally published on the UN Women Asia and the Pacific website on 4 June 2026.