By Guy Dinmore
LONDON/MANDALAY, Apr 2 2025 – Boosting faint hopes of still finding survivors, rescue workers from Myanmar and Turkey pulled a man alive from the rubble of a hotel in the capital early on Wednesday, five days after the quake hit. But hope of finding more survivors is slim after central Myanmar was devastated by a massive earthquake last Friday. Now aid workers are struggling to deliver body bags, medicines and food and water against the backdrop of civil war.

With temperatures around 40 degrees, the stench of death pervades piles of rubble that once were homes, blocks of flats, hospitals, government buildings, Buddhist temples, mosques, marketplaces, schools and nurseries. Many of the victims of the daytime disaster were children, Muslims at Friday prayers, civil servants and monks taking exams.

Among more than 3,000 confirmed deaths so far were 50 children and two teachers killed when their preschool collapsed in Mandalay, according to the UN relief coordinator. The UN also said 10,000 buildings in the area around the capital Naypyitaw had “collapsed or sustained severe damage”.

“Body bags, quicklime powder, water sanitisers, drinking water, dry food.” So begins the list of most urgently needed items requested by civil society organisations that have set up the Myanmar Emergency Response Coordination Unit, based mostly across the border in Thailand.

The military junta, which seized power from an elected government in 2021, made a fast and unexpected appeal for international aid. But hopes of at least a pause in the war were soon dashed as the regime continued daily air strikes against resistance forces and civilians.

A unilateral declaration of a two-week halt to its offensive by forces under the National Unity Government, representing the ousted administration, has gone unanswered.

Rescue workers allowed to enter Myanmar are mainly from ‘friendly’ countries, including China and Russia—the junta’s main suppliers of armaments—and neighbours Thailand and India. A team of disaster experts from Italy – no stranger to earthquakes – was on standby for days but no visas came through.

The Great Wall Hotel in Mandalay on March 31, three days after the 7.7 magnitude quake hit central Myanmar. Credit: IPS Reporter

Julie Bishop, UN Special Envoy on Myanmar and former Australian prime minister, called on all parties “to immediately cease hostilities and focus their efforts on the protection of civilians, including aid workers, and the delivery of life-saving assistance”.

She also called on the regime to allow safe and unfettered access to UN agencies and partners to reach all people in need.

A local reporter in Mandalay confirmed that, “Fuel and water shortages are a big problem. There is no power. Fuel cannot get to earthquake-affected areas because roads and bridges are broken.

“People on the ground have not received international aid,” she added. “Many local individuals are making donations for food, water and other basic needs for the quake victims.”

Volunteers and CSOs are struggling to get aid to victims in towns and rural areas held by the resistance as well as to Mandalay – the country’s second biggest city, which is under military control and was close to the epicentre of the 7.7 magnitude quake.

“There have been reports and people calling us stating youth groups heading to Mandalay and passing to Kalaw and to Inle have been detained. So far, several dozen recorded. Their friends have asked us for help getting them released; some were men likely conscripted,” one activist wrote in a warning to others.

The confirmed death toll rises daily. On April 1 the regime’s General Min Aung Hlaing said in a televised address that 2,719 bodies had been recovered, while Democratic Voice of Burma said it had documented 3,195 dead. Thousands more are injured.

Even four days after the quake struck – and many areas still rocked by daily aftershocks – little information has emerged from swaths of central Myanmar, deprived of barely any communications because of the junta’s attempts to isolate civilian strongholds of the various ethnic armed groups and ‘People’s Defence Forces’ set up since the coup.

As well as communications, the quake has destroyed roads, bridges, and power lines. The sprawling metropolis of Yangon, largely unscathed, is without electricity and short of water.

Tom Andrews, UN special rapporteur on Myanmar, spoke of “consistent reports” of aid being blocked by the regime, rescue workers denied access, and continuing air strikes.  The NUG reported air strikes on seven locations across the country in the early hours of April 1.

In terms of territory, the military’s State Administration Council can barely exert its authority over a third of the country, having steadily lost ground to a complex and loosely allied array of opposition forces, some with long historic grievances against regimes dominated by the Bamar majority. But in terms of population, the regime holds sway over the biggest urban areas, including Yangon and Mandalay and the newly built capital Naypyitaw.

The NUG, struggling to assert its own authority as a parallel government with its goal of establishing a federal, democratic Myanmar, has appealed to the international community to mobilise resources.

A separate appeal issued by 265 Myanmar regional and international civil society organisations called on the world not to channel aid through the regime but through the NUG, “ethnic resistance organisations” and civil society.

“ We emphasise that these disaster relief efforts, through any implementing partners, must not be exploited, manipulated, or weaponised by the military junta for its political and military gain,” their open letter stated.

“Myanmar’s history provides stark warnings about the dangers of channelling aid through the military junta,” it said, referring to the disaster of Cyclone Nargis, which killed an estimated 100,000 people in 2008 when the previous military regime initially refused international aid and then manipulated its distribution ahead of a national referendum on a new constitution.

The CSOs took particular aim at UN agencies already stationed in Myanmar, warning them not to allow the regime to obstruct or prevent aid delivery as it has in the four years since the coup.

Even if the junta were to cease its offensives – as some Asian governments are starting to call for – and allow unfettered access to aid agencies, the depth of Myanmar’s degradation through years of conflict and oppression would require massive amounts of support that show no sign of arriving.

A building reduced to rubble in Thapyaygone market in the capital Naypyitaw following the March 28 earthquake that has killed over 3,000 people. Credit: IPS Reporter

Even before the quake struck on March 28, the UN was warning that nearly 20 million people in Myanmar – over a third of the population – needed humanitarian assistance, including some 3.5 million people internally displaced because of conflict. Several million have also been forced or sought shelter beyond Myanmar’s borders, including over 900,000 in the world’s biggest refugee encampment in Bangladesh.

Just some weeks ago, the regime was trying to stamp its authority by shutting down private hospitals and clinics in Mandalay that had employed staff from the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement who had previously worked in state hospitals.

China, which sees Myanmar as a vital strategic link to the Indian Ocean for oil and gas pipelines and a deep sea port, has been quick to send in aid and its Blue Sky rescue workers, working closely with the regime in Mandalay.

Beijing’s path to greater influence over Myanmar had already been smoothed by the Trump administration’s pre-quake decision to slash its aid that went mainly to refugees, UN agencies, and CSOs in the border areas.

Delivering a statement to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva less than two weeks before the quake, Andrews, the special rapporteur, condemned the Myanmar regime’s atrocities against civilians “unleashing jet fighters and helicopter gunships to strike hospitals, schools, teashops, religious facilities, festivals and camps for internally displaced persons”.

But he also lashed out at the “sudden, chaotic withdrawal of support” by the US government, which he described as having “a crushing impact” on families, refugee camps, and human rights defenders. He also noted the World Food Programme had announced that one million people would be cut off from life-saving food assistance in Myanmar because of budget cuts by the US and other donors.

Note: Additional reporting from IPS correspondents in Myanmar.
IPS UN Bureau Report,

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By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Apr 2 2025 – Today’s multiple and connected crises – including conflicts, climate breakdown and democratic regression – are overwhelming the capabilities of the international institutions designed to address problems states can’t or won’t solve. Now US withdrawal from global bodies threatens to worsen a crisis in international cooperation.

The second Trump administration quickly announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO), terminated its cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council, walked out of negotiations on a global tax treaty and imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court officials.

Although the USA has sometimes been an obstructive force, including by repeatedly blocking Security Council resolutions on Israel, global institutions lose legitimacy when powerful states opt out. While all states are formally equal in the UN, the reality is that the USA’s decisions to participate or quit matter more than most because it’s a superpower whose actions have global implications. It’s also the biggest funder of UN institutions, even if it has a poor record in paying on time.

As it stands, the USA’s WHO withdrawal will take effect in January 2026, although the decision could face a legal challenge and Trump could rescind his decision if the WHO makes changes to his liking, since deal-making powered by threats and brinkmanship is how he does business. But if withdrawal happens, the WHO will be hard hit. The US government is the WHO’s biggest contributor, providing around 18 per cent of funding. That’s a huge gap to fill, and it’s likely the organisation will have to cut back its work. Progress towards a global pandemic treaty, under negotiation since 2021, may be hindered.

It’s possible philanthropic sources will step up their support, and other states may help fill the gap. The challenge comes if authoritarian states take advantage of the situation by increasing their contributions and expect greater influence in return. China, for example, may be poised to do so.

That’s what happened when the first Trump administration pulled out of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). China filled the vacuum by increasing its contributions to become UNESCO’s biggest annual funder. Presumably not coincidentally, a Chinese official became its deputy head, while China was able to block Taiwan’s attempts to join. It was out of concern about this growing influence that the Biden administration took the USA back into UNESCO in 2023; that decision could now be reversed, as Trump has claimed UNESCO is biased against the USA and ordered a review.

The Human Rights Council may be less immediately affected because the USA isn’t currently a member, its term having ended at the close of 2024. It rejoined in 2021 after Trump pulled out in 2018, and had already made the unusual decision not to seek a second term, likely because this would have provoked a backlash over its support for Israel. Apart from its relationship with Israel, however, during its term under the Biden administration the USA was largely recognised as playing a positive role in the Council’s business. If it refuses to cooperate, it deprives US citizens of a vital avenue of redress.

The USA’s actions may also inspire other states with extremist leaders to follow suit. Argentina’s President Milei, a keen Trump admirer, has imitated him by announcing his country’s departure from the WHO. Political leaders in Hungary and Italy have discussed doing the same. Israel followed the USA in declaring it wouldn’t engage with the Human Rights Council. For its own reasons, in February authoritarian Nicaragua also announced its withdrawal from the Council following a report critical of its appalling human rights record.

It could be argued that institutions like the Human Rights Council and UNESCO, having survived one Trump withdrawal, can endure a second. But these shocks come at a different time, when the UN system is already more fragile and damaged. Now the very idea of multilateralism and a rules-based international order is under attack, with transactional politics and hard-nosed national power calculations on the rise. Backroom deals resulting from power games are replacing processes with a degree of transparency aimed at achieving consensus. The space for civil society engagement and opportunities for leverage are in danger of shrinking accordingly.

Real reform needed

Revitalising the UN may seem a tall order when it’s under attack, but as CIVICUS’s 2025 State of Civil Society Report outlines, civil society has ideas about how to save the UN by putting people at its heart. The UNMute Civil Society initiative, backed by over 300 organisations and numerous states, makes five calls to improve civil society’s involvement: using digital technologies to broaden participation, bridging digital divides by focusing on connectivity for the most excluded, changing procedures and practices to ensure effective and meaningful participation, creating an annual civil society action day as an opportunity to assess progress on civil society participation and appointing a UN civil society envoy.

Each of these ideas is practical and could open up space for greater reforms. A UN civil society envoy could, for example, promote best practices in civil society participation across the UN and ensure a diverse range of civil society is involved in the UN’s work.

Civil society is also calling for competitive Human Rights Council elections, with a civil society role in scrutinising candidates, and limits on Security Council veto powers. And as time approaches to pick a new UN Secretary-General, civil society is mobilising the 1 for 8 billion campaign, pushing for an open, transparent, inclusive and merit-based selection process. The office has always been held by a man, and the call is for the UN to make history by appointing a feminist woman leader.

These would all offer small steps towards making the UN system more open, democratic and accountable. There’s nothing impossible or unimaginable about these ideas, and times of crisis create opportunities to experiment. States that want to reverse the tide of attacks on international cooperation and revitalise the UN should work with civil society to take them forward.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact [email protected].

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