Helping however it's needed: Inside Myanmar's women-led humanitarian response

Across Myanmar, women-led organizations are drawing on deep community connections and gender expertise to reach people and identify needs that can otherwise go unseen, even as shrinking resources and ongoing conflict make their work increasingly difficult.

“I help people, I help whoever needs help, I provide whatever's needed,” said Ko Ko Gyi, the operations lead at a women-led organization delivering humanitarian assistance across several conflict-affected areas in Myanmar. Mi Mon, the founder and program director of a long-running community development organization in Mon State, puts it another way: “It's like giving your own jacket to someone who has no jacket to wear.”

These simple descriptions belie the anything-but-simple task of delivering humanitarian assistance in Myanmar. More than five years into a crisis that shows no sign of easing, over 16 million people are in humanitarian need, more than half of them women and girls. And almost 3.9 million are internally displaced.

Amid these growing needs, women-led organizations have become some of the most consistent and trusted sources of assistance, drawing on relationships and networks built over years, sometimes decades, to reach remote and conflict-affected communities.

Reaching communities, understanding needs

Mi Mon’s organization has spent years building relationships with local groups and leaders, while graduates of its training programme have become trusted contacts in communities across the state. “It's through these connections that I feel we've been able to do our work better,” Mi Mon said. 

“Even under very difficult conditions, we're still able to reach very remote areas.” 

Such networks also help organizations reach people whose needs risk being overlooked as one emergency follows another. Khin Hnin Soe, an area coordinator and project manager with a women-led civil society organization operating in Rakhine, remembers visiting a community where people had been displaced for years. At first, they held onto the belief that they would soon return home, “little by little, year after year, that belief started to fade,” she said. By the time her organization reached the community, they had been without assistance for a long period. “They told us how much it meant that we'd taken the time — even after so long — to still care about them, to think of them,” she said.

Ko Ko Gyi says his own experience informs how he thinks about whose needs are recognized in humanitarian response. “Even though I present as male, I live with a feminine identity internally,” Ko Ko Gyi said. That experience informs an acute awareness of the risks faced by LGBTIQ+ people, particularly in rural and conflict-affected communities. “Specifically trans people, people who dress and present as women — in our gender-focused work, we make a point of prioritizing them,” Ko Ko Gyi said. “They face far more sexual violence in these areas than others.”

Working under growing pressure

Khin Hnin Soe has seen the combined effects of fuel shortages, funding cuts, inflation and cash shortages on the capacity of her organization. In one project, “We planned to properly benefit six villages, but we found we couldn't reach that target anymore... we ended up only able to help around three,” she said.

Many also operate amid active conflict, at times forcing teams to relocate to safer areas. This prolonged exposure takes a psychological toll. Khin Hnin Soe described constantly preparing for something to happen without warning. Even in her sleep she hears sounds of fighting and worries whether staff or the communities they work with are in danger. “Living with that constant anxiety is the most difficult part,” she said. 

“Women face the added risk of sexual violence... that's an extra layer of danger for them,” Mi Mon said. Khin Hnin Soe also described returning from field visits at eight or nine at night, when roads were largely deserted. “Once it's empty like that, we, as women, have experienced being followed and harassed,” she said. “That's a challenge that's different from what men face.”

What keeps them going

At nearly 60 years of age, Mi Mon admits there are times when exhaustion makes her wonder whether she should stop running the organization she helped build. 

“Sometimes I think, at my age, other people just spend their time with family; maybe I should live like that too — go to the pagoda, go to the monastery, spend my time like that.” 

But the thought doesn’t last long. 

“When I look at people's faces, I see worry there; in what they say, I hear suffering, I see they're going through hardship,” she said. “It wipes away any feeling that I don't want to do this work anymore and I just find myself helping.”

UN Women works with women-led and women’s rights organizations across Myanmar, providing gender-responsive support and helping strengthen their role as first responders and decision-makers in humanitarian action. Learn more about how women-led organizations are sustaining humanitarian access in Myanmar in this brief prepared by the Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group, co-led by UN Women and UNFPA.