More than three-and-a-half years after the Myanmar military’s 2021 attempted coup, it is clear that alarm bells warning of the coup’s negative gendered impacts did not sound loudly enough. A brutal and misogynistic military boded ill for human rights and gender equality, but the devastation the coup and its aftermath have inflicted on women, girls, and gender-diverse people in Myanmar has been staggering. With other international crises drawing away attention from the civil war now affecting two-thirds of the country, those suffering on the ground have been left to deal with these multidimensional harms on their own, without adequate support from regional and international actors who continue to focus on engagement with a military committing heinous human rights abuses.
Ruinous Impacts on Women
The devastating gendered impacts of the coup are detailed in a comprehensive new report by Tom Andrews, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. The report shines a spotlight on the myriad ways that women and gender-diverse individuals have suffered disproportionate harms since the coup. It also recognizes that these gendered impacts are rooted in unequal socio-cultural norms and decades of patriarchal and brutal military rule.
While all civilians have suffered from the military junta’s countrywide campaign of terror, which has included airstrikes, killings, arson, and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), women and gender-diverse individuals have faced disproportionate harm. For decades, the military has used vicious SGBV as a tactic to quell resistance in ethnic areas, with the U.N. finding widespread use of SGBV in military operations. Since the coup, SGBV, including rapes and gang rapes, have been reported throughout the country, including in displacement settings, at security checkpoints, and in detention. The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar has collected “substantial evidence” of post-coup SGBV, and the U.N. secretary-general has identified that the “highest levels of cruelty” are being used. Troublingly, SGBV is also reportedly being perpetrated by resistance forces, compounding the security dangers.
Rates of intimate partner violence have also risen due to political instability, economic stressors, and gender-based power imbalances. Forced marriage, trafficking, and sex trade occupations are also increasing as a result of physical and economic insecurity.
Yet survivors have few options for justice. The rule of law has broken down, with the military-controlled police focusing on suppressing dissent rather than investigating crimes like SGBV. The military has instrumentalized the legal and judicial systems by arbitrarily arresting civilians, including 5,618 women as of July 25, 2024. Detention conditions are inhumane, with widespread reports of sexual violence, excessive force, and denial of healthcare and other basic services.
Civilians have also had to deal with an economy in freefall, as the military-proxy State Administration Council (SAC)’s gross mismanagement has bred unchecked inflation, economic turmoil, and increased unemployment, with almost half the population now living in poverty. Women make up the majority of low-wage workers and are responsible for providing food and necessities for their families, which has led to a feminization of poverty.
Myanmar’s health system has collapsed since the coup, with women – especially pregnant and nursing mothers – facing significant health challenges, including a lack of access to sanitation, food, sexual and reproductive health services, and medicine. The education system is unavailable to many, and social services are difficult to access. The combined effects have wrought havoc on women’s mental health and quality of life and led to harmful coping mechanisms.
The combination of conflict, SAC mismanagement, and the collapse of public infrastructure has caused a massive humanitarian disaster, with an estimated 18.6 million people needing humanitarian assistance, including 9.2 million women and girls. Almost 3.2 million people have been forcibly displaced, of which 53 percent are women and girls.
The situation is particularly grim in Rakhine State, where Rohingya women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals have long-faced intersectional harms and discrimination, including brutal sexual violence as part of the military’s clearance operations in 2016 and 2017. Post-coup restrictions on movement and employment, and a lack of humanitarian aid, combined with renewed fighting between the Arakan Army and the military, have only increased these vulnerabilities.
And somehow, the military keeps making the situation worse. In March, it began enforcing a long-dormant conscription law requiring years of military service, including by unmarried women. Women now must either serve in a military with a long history of sexual violence, flee, or marry early. Women spared conscription face increased familial burdens, with men either conscripted or on the run to avoid service.
Women Rising to the Fore
Women have long been politically marginalized, especially at the leadership level, despite Aung San Suu Kyi’s time as de facto head of state during Myanmar’s failed transition to democracy. But in the face of chaos, conflict, and devastating gendered harms, women and gender-diverse individuals have played a pivotal role in protests and boycotts. Their activism is challenging the regressive gendered social norms that have marginalized them, at great risk to their safety and security. An estimated three-quarters of civil disobedience movement protesters were women, a testament to their courage and understanding of the disastrous gendered dangers of military rule.
Despite the leading role women have played in the resistance movement, their access to political power has not substantially improved since the coup. The National Unity Government, the shadow opposition government made up of deposed lawmakers elected in November 2020, has appointed only 18 percent women at the ministerial level. Few women are leaders in IDP communities and women are a minority in ethnic-based consultative councils. Yet research shows that the quality of women’s contributions can have a substantial impact on the sustainability and durability of peace agreements and that countries with more women in leadership are more prosperous.
Regional and International Failures
International and regional actors have failed to provide the necessary support, resources, services, or justice to address these extensive and dangerous gendered harms. Humanitarian aid has been woefully insufficient and has failed to reach those in need, in part due to reliance on partnerships with a military junta that has obstructed aid delivery. Again, women have stepped in to fill the void, providing relief and services to meet increasing and urgent humanitarian needs despite threats to their family’s safety as well as their own.
Clinging to the pipe dream of resolving the crisis via ASEAN’s failed Five-Point Consensus, which the junta has defied, international support and attention has waned. The last U.N. Security Council resolution on Myanmar was passed in December 2022, and called for a cessation of violence and de-escalation of hostilities, neither of which has occurred. The junta has little incentive to change its tactics given that U.N. and regional actors, including ASEAN, continue to engage with them despite their violent criminality and disastrous mismanagement of the country. While the appointment of Julie Bishop as U.N. special envoy could be a step in the right direction, it remains to be seen how effective she can be in what has long been considered a difficult role.
There is so much more the international community can and should do, starting with supporting ongoing international efforts to hold the military accountable for past human rights abuses and ensuring that these efforts include justice for sexual and gender-based crimes. A criminal case was launched in November 2021 in Argentina under the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes against the Rohingya in connection with the Myanmar military’s 2017 genocidal campaign in Rakhine State. In a promising step, the Argentine prosecutor in June 2024 asked the court to issue arrest warrants against 25 individuals. The International Court of Justice is currently considering whether Myanmar’s 2017 actions violate the Genocide Convention in a case brought by The Gambia. The International Criminal Court is also currently investigating potential international crimes, but due to jurisdictional limitations, it can only prosecute crimes committed at least partially inside Bangladeshi territory.
These efforts, while both constructive and symbolic, will only address limited violations that mainly revolve around the 2016 and 2017 “clearance operations” against the Rohingya in Rakhine State. But as the special rapporteur’s report lays bare, the coup and its aftermath have had deep and damaging gender-based impacts which need to be addressed by a wider range of accountability efforts that will cover the full range of harms experienced.
First and foremost is the unequivocal rejection of the military junta as a governing authority in Myanmar, including permanently rejecting the SAC’s claim to Myanmar’s U.N. seat and refusing to recognize any proposed sham elections. The UN Security Council could also take more concerted action, including referring the situation to the International Criminal Court so that the full range of atrocities can be investigated. Further targeted economic sanctions or an arms embargo, including on transfers of jet fuel, must also be pursued.
ASEAN must recognize that engaging with the junta, which continues to commit heinous human rights abuses, is only prolonging the crisis and increasing civilian suffering. They should act to support the will of the Myanmar people through new and inclusive political frameworks. Finally, more humanitarian aid is desperately needed and must be delivered in partnership with local groups that understand the local context best and can reach those most in need.
Conclusion
Men may account for more combat casualties in Myanmar, but by every metric, the safety, health, and well-being of women and gender-diverse individuals have plummeted since the coup. They have borne the brunt of the crisis yet have risen to the forefront of the resistance movement, mobilizing at the grassroots level to ameliorate harms they did not cause. But they cannot do it alone. They need much more international, political, and financial support to ensure they succeed in building a more diverse, inclusive, and equal Myanmar finally free from the yoke of brutal military rule.