Uncertainty, dangers loom for Myanmar women, girls, and other vulnerable populations after earthquake

Last week’s earthquake in Myanmar is the latest of a series of unprecedented challenges the country’s people have confronted since the military junta attempted a coup on February 1, 2021. The quake’s effects have once again aggravated and highlighted the vulnerability of women, girls, and gender-diverse people, who often bear the brunt of impacts from disaster. The quake comes months after Typhoon Yagi, a massive monsoon that led to the deaths of 844 people in September 2024, disproportionately affecting women and girls. We fear the same will happen in the aftermath of the quake. 

The military not only tends to neglect communities in need, but to politicise the response to disasters, weaponising aid by applying discriminatory criteria to its distribution and continuing to attack communities it suspects of connections to the resistance. Further compounding the problems of the junta’s usual response, it is virtually inevitable that the recent, massive withdrawal of humanitarian funding by the United States will make the disaster’s effects worse.