Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun says 4.9 million Myanmar children need humanitarian aid

Mizzima

Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said on 12 October that 4.9 million children in Myanmar need humanitarian assistance, citing the military junta’s intensified airstrikes and heavy artillery attacks.

He spoke during a discussion on children’s rights at the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Kyaw Moe Tun said the junta is intentionally blocking access, leaving 1.2 million children without life-saving vaccines and health services. He said the junta is deliberately targeting civilian and non-military sites, including homes, villages, hospitals, schools, religious buildings, markets and camps for internally displaced people.

As a result, he said, children in Myanmar are suffering loss of life, separation from their families, destruction of their homes and schools, severe food shortages and a lack of health care.

He said a hamburger is an easily available food for an ordinary child but a luxury for children living in displacement camps. Local communities and relief workers, he said, struggle constantly to raise funds just to provide displaced children with a special meal once a month or once every three months.

Kyaw Moe Tun said the leaders of the junta must be held accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that the international community should neither shield the junta nor act in ways that reward its crimes. He urged states to use international mechanisms effectively to hold perpetrators accountable and to show genuine political will, based on humanitarian principles, through concrete action to save the people and children of Myanmar.