Books, Bombs, and Battlefield Needs: Rethinking Development in Myanmar
Thura reflects on the need for international aid to understand the core challenges Myanmar’s displaced populations face beyond just education. For Thura, merely framing the need as “providing education” can miss the mark, given that education alone is not the most pressing concern. Rather, many displaced people are more focused on resisting the military regime, knowing that without regime change, the cycle of displacement and disrupted schooling will persist. Aid strategies that address only educational needs, he believes, may inadvertently ignore the larger crisis, as many families resist attending state schools to avoid aligning with the regime, even if it adds personal hardship. Thura advocates for aid organizations to start with the question, “How can we support Myanmar’s fight against the regime?” before considering educational support or humanitarian assistance as strategic methods. SUM’s approach is built around this understanding, offering young people resources to empower their resistance and develop political responses. This includes aiding CDM professors and working with local administrators in high-conflict areas to determine the community’s immediate needs, such as rebuilding infrastructure or delivering essential supplies. Thura sees this holistic, top-down and bottom-up approach as critical for aligning aid with the deeper struggle for freedom and fostering trust with ethnic communities and displaced populations. Listen to the full podcast discussion here.
“It’s important that to build trust with these ethnic communities and the displaced communities, because they have gone through so much traumatic experiences, not just during this coup but over the past decades. Trust is a delicate and urgent need. ”
There are different priorities of needs among the displaced population. I will say, the most important thing to begin with in addressing these challenges to meet all critical needs is to start with the right problem statement. There is a mistake commonly made by many international aids, such as international universities, development partners, embassies, and many international stakeholders that we've talked to. When we see children and teachers hiding out in bomb shelters and schools burnt to the ground, the need for consistent education is a major concern in taking humanitarian measures. But if we start from the point of thinking - “The young people of Myanmar needs education”, I believe the statement is rather a short-sighted approach that will lead to inaccurate and sometimes wrong remedies. The reason is that, generally speaking, education is not really the top priority Myanmar people need or want right now. Or else, they would have just simply given into the military demands. I know it sounds horrible, but if education was top priority for displaced families right now, they would just send their kids to state-owned schools, without having to flee for safety, having to hide in bomb shelters nor get their schools burnt. The only drawback would be the poor and terrible quality of teaching their children will receive. Education is not the top priority for people in Myanmar right now. What we all are really trying to do is take down this military regime once and for all. Everyone understands that the reason why the development of alternative education platforms, limited access to healthcare, people fleeing, people being displaced and all the atrocities are happening. It is all because of the military junta regime. The people of Myanmar are willing to go through hardships and we are all willing to go through this together, in trying to take down the regime.
The correct approach to making a strong problem statement should begin with, ‘how can we help Myanmar people in their fight in taking down the regime?’, and then other related questions like, ‘how do we do it?’, ‘do we do it through the humanitarian assistance support?’, or ‘do we do it through education?’, ‘do we do it through other technical support that that they will be needing?’, etc. I am only highlighting this common mistake because education is not the only need that Myanmar people have. I have seen some international partners and development organizations, just putting a blind side to the rest of the conflict, just solely focusing on issues related to education and trying to provide education at all cost. Further down the line, they meet other problems like dealing with the SAC, interacting with ethnic communities and other groups involved in the spring revolution. This is why formulating the problem statement clearly from the start of humanitarian effort is extremely important.
So for SUM, though education is our domain, the primary goal has always been to help the young people fight their fight. So we are teaching them along the way. We are providing them resources, connections and exposures to each other and to the rest of the world. We are helping them formulate their political responses and their campaigns. We are also helping the CDM professors because, as long as they remain CDM, they are also fighting this military regime. Our activities reflect our core foundation and we will continue to take the same approach in addressing issues for those in more critical needs.
For those people located in the most intense ongoing battles in Karen state and in northern Shan, we work together with local administrators and ethnic administrators, the two de-facto governing bodies in the regions. We adopt both a top-down approach and bottom-up approach that look at the needs of the governing authority. Sometimes, it is the infrastructures needing to be rebuilt since all schools have been burnt throughout the area. Sometimes, humanitarian assistance is needed in providing necessities like medicine, water and food. After assessing the different needs of the people in the war-torn area, we would try to align our intervention program according to their priorities. So, that would be the top-down approach.
The other bottom-up approach we take requires us to start with a talk to the local educators on the ground who are from various ethnic backgrounds, coming from different regions of Myanmar. Some of them have had to flee from their hometowns and now they are all at the frontier areas of the fight. They have inspiring ideas for their vision in educating the youth, and they have come up with creative ways to reach out to these students, because they have very limited resources.
In conclusion, proper humanitarian aid for people with the most critical and urgent needs in the most intense battle states, would be to first, have the right problem assessment. We need to understand that this is all happening because of the military. This is all happening because the people are trying to fight this fight. We need to stand behind them and support them in their quest. Our focus area will be education. Our education priorities and deliverables need to be aligned with their community’s governance and public administration objectives, as well as the political objectives that those authorities are trying to achieve. So it is a part of the package. Once we get through that, I think it's also important that to build trust with these ethnic communities and the displaced communities, because they have gone through so much traumatic experiences and other psychological issues, not just during this coup but over the past decades. Trust is a delicate and urgent need. I hope that other neighboring countries, actually Thailand, India and Bangladesh would start to consider supporting our spring revolution and no longer stay neutral in this national conflict.