Besides, there is also a civil disobedience movement by some health professionals against the junta, which Balakrishnan said has disrupted even basic services across the country. The UN official also noted that Myanmar’s health system is under extreme pressure because of the coronavirus crisis as well as attacks on medical personnel and facilities. In this regard, the UN’s priorities include ensuring that millions of people do not fall further into hunger. Rising hungerīalakrishnan explained that an increase in the price of basic commodities has led to “a reduction of the nutrition value of the food basket that people usually take as they substitute their regular food with cheaper, more readily available items”. In a post on Twitter, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated over 220,000 people have been displaced by conflicts and insecurity since the coup.
![myanmar news myanmar news](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/branded_news/11A42/production/_117585227_hi066246152-1.jpg)
The intensification of clashes and the worsening socio-economic situation was pushing “tens of thousands of people” into a humanitarian space” every day.īalakrishnan echoed the concerns over rights abuses by the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF and others, and condemned the ongoing and widespread use of lethal force by the military against civilian protesters. More widely, “following the coup, an additional two million were identified as those in urgent need of humanitarian aid, and those were largely in the urban areas of Yangon and Mandalay”, he said. “This number has only swelled,” Balakrishnan lamented. Highlighting the ongoing nature of armed resistance to the military’s security forces “in several ethnic minority areas” including in the states of Shan, Chin and Kachin, the UN’s top aid official said that more than 200,000 people had been uprooted from their homes there to date.Īccording to the UN Humanitarian Response Plan, before the coup, Rakhine already had some 1 million people, including internally displaced people (IDP), in urgent need of help. “The situation in the country is characterized now by instability and a deteriorating socio-economic and security situation and to add to that, we have a raging third wave of COVID-19,” Balakrishnan told UN News. Since then, the junta's security force has been cracking down heavily on protesters and their supporters. The UN’s Acting Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator, Ramanathan Balakrishnan, explained how people have been severely impacted across the country since the junta overthrew Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her elected government on February 1. Sunday, August 1, marks 6 months since the military coup in Myanmar that has thrown the impoverished nation into a spiralling crisis with serious political, socio-economic, human rights and humanitarian repercussions on the people.