Myanmar
Courageous use for peace and human rights
December 2024
"I have always encouraged myself," says Aung Myo Min, Minister for Human Rights in the NUG (National Unity Government - Government of National Unity). The NUG is the elected government of Myanmar of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. "Because if you want to change something, you have to get up and fight for what you want to change."
He refers to the rights of ethnic or sexual minorities (LGBTIQ+), the rights of children and young people, and the protection of children from war and violence in Myanmar – because Myo Min has been committed to all of these issues for a long time, long before he became minister. Myo is a human rights activist and founder of the NGO "Equality Myanmar" (formerly the "Human Rights Education Institute of Burma"), which has been successfully collaborating with Terre des Hommes for almost twenty years.
Act from the surface
Myo Mins work is risky: Since the Myanmar government chosen by a large majority was violently puzzled by the military in February 2021, he has had to act with his colleagues from the surface. The military personally act against demonstrators and ethnic minorities, arrest people or inevitably recruit them in the army, including many children and adolescents.
The armed conflict between the army and various armed groups is more and more escalated, tens of thousands of people were killed, around two million were driven out. Since 2021 there have been more than 3,000 bombing from aircraft and helicopters of the Myanmarische Army, more than half in 2024, most of the civilians in villages: schools, hospitals, marketplaces. People are desperate and urgently need help.
"It is now important to have a boycott of the delivery of flight petrol to the military junta so that it cannot continue their ruthless bombing of villages and schools."
Terre des Hommes supports emergency aid projects with numerous partner organizations in the country itself and in camps and villages near the border in neighboring Thailand, where many people have been forced to flee. In addition to distributing food and medicine, the primary goal is to protect children and young people from violence and create safe spaces for them where they can attend kindergarten or school, receive vocational training, and receive medical and psychological care—for many of them, this is a life-saving anchor.
Myo Min is convinced that the illegal military junta will lose war, because there would be many defectors and nobody wanted to enter the Myanmarian army anymore, which increasingly get on the defensive militarily. The international pressure also increases the Junta and the economic sanctions would have an effect. »It is now important to have a boycott of the delivery of flight petrol to the military junta so that it cannot continue their ruthless bombing of villages and schools. We are also committed to the United Nations. "
An article by Terre des Hommes expert Ralf Willinger on the recruitment of child soldiers and arms trafficking, including a case study from Myanmar, can be found here .