The United Nations Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths made a visit this week to Myanmar’s military capital Naypyidaw, and went mano-a-mano with dictator Min Aung Hlaing, recently self-appointed prime minister and head of the State Administration Council (SAC) junta.
Griffiths, also the head of the Office Coordinating Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), is probably the highest-ranking UN official to visit Myanmar since the February 2021 coup.
The UN and international aid agencies have been facing severe restrictions on responding not just to spreading armed conflict throughout Myanmar, which has displaced nearly two million civilians, but also following Cyclone Mocha devastated large parts of Rakhine state and Magwe and Sagaing Regions in mid-May. The military continues to obstruct recovery efforts and reconstruction.
State-run media ran this headline the day after Griffiths and Min Aung Hlaing met and shook hands in Naypyidaw; “Global community should seek accurate information on Myanmar’s situation.”
From the military’s side, the topics for discussion ranged from “spreading misinformation on various situations of Myanmar in the international community, the need for the international community to know actual conditions in Myanmar, lesser aid of international organizations including the United Nations for Myanmar in the period when the Covid-19 broke out and storm (Cyclone) Mocha hit, and further cooperation in humanitarian aid.”
This could be summarized as Min Aung Hlaing blaming the UN and the international community for the violence and dysfunction fueled by his failing military rule. We shouldn’t mistake Griffiths’ visit as a genuine gesture of cooperation from the SAC after years of foreign aid obstruction across the country.
For Min Aung Hlaing it was a “kneel before me” moment, even if the OCHA head isn’t “a take the knee” kind of guy. A seasoned diplomat, founder of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Center) and advisor to Middle East peace envoys, Griffiths is a practiced interlocutor with despots. Maybe that’s the problem: he’s simply going through the motions.
It was therefore glumly predictable Griffiths would release a tepid statement. “Successive crises in Myanmar have left one-third of the population in need of humanitarian aid. They expect more and better from their leaders and from the international community” is pointing out not just the obvious but the clear implication that the UN has been failing.
Then, quite brazenly, Griffiths claimed the UN could do better with more access and more funding, reminding a miserly world that the UN humanitarian response plan was only 22% funded.
It’s clear that UN communications messaging is comfortable with stark contradictions, but fund-raising after shaking hands with a war criminal and visiting disaster-racked Rakhine state? Indecorous, if not dehumanizing.
And if the UN has been unable to credibly claim they were capable of doing more with increased funding, then why give them more cash? A hangdog foreigner with hat in hand pleading for mercy and more money doesn’t move a war criminal.
The standard UN reproach after visits like this is wait-and-see the results: even small changes on the ground are evidence of progress and perhaps Griffiths’ was able to penetrate Min Aung Hlaing’s hard shell.
Unlikely. There has been intense criticism of the UN and the international community for their lack of progress in moving the SAC. Griffiths’ visit should be proof that Myanmar hasn’t completely disappeared from the UN’s conscience, and regardless of the view on “success”, he made the effort and is trying. But this is short-term memory loss logic.
Griffiths and the SAC have been at odds before. Responding to the Christmas Eve massacre at Hpruso in Kayah state, where SAC forces murdered 35 civilians and set fire to their vehicles, Griffiths released a statement two days later that stated:
“I condemn this grievous incident and all attacks against civilians throughout the country. I call upon the authorities to immediately commence a thorough and transparent investigation…(and) call upon the Myanmar Armed Forces and all armed groups in Myanmar to take all measures to protect civilians from harm.”
The SAC’s unconvincing response claimed: “Then, about 10 terrorists who were waiting on the hills of the village attacked with (assorted weapons)…KNPP (Karenni National Progressive Party and PDF (People’s Defense Forces) terrorists, including newcomers for explosive training, were arrested dead…the seven vehicles carrying petrol, diesel and foodstuffs collected from the villages by force for the terrorist groups were burnt.”
This has been the SAC’s response to UN accusations of war crimes since the 2021 coup: deny everything and wait for the UN to move on. It’s rumored it was Griffiths who defenestrated former UN special envoy Noeleen Heyzer. If there was valid criticism of Heyzer’s lack of progress, and a lot of criticism was misplaced, the SAC now sits squarely in Griffith’s inbox.
Three further points from Griffiths’ visit are evident. First, the obstruction of aid after Cyclone Mocha provides ample evidence of the SAC’s insincerity in helping people in need.
A recent report from the independent Center for Arakan Studies comparing responses to Cyclone Mocha and the devastating 2008 Cyclone Nargis indicated very similar military obstructing tactics to both disasters, and crucially in the weeks after the May storm, severe restrictions on Rakhine civil society aid workers – something Griffiths failed to mention in his statement.
The UN and aid organizations have also not been able to ensure unfettered access in conflict areas in Myanmar’s northwest, let alone in Rakhine and eastern borderlands, and the majority of aid delivered is in firmly SAC-controlled territory.
Second, Griffiths’ visit illustrates how utterly ineffective the UN Country Team has been, especially since Mocha. The Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator (ad interim) Ramanathan Balakrishnan has displayed all the qualities of senior UN management in an authoritarian setting in order to achieve maximum ineffectiveness. Griffiths wouldn’t have had to visit if the country team had been able to do its job. It’s not a performance that compels donors to reach for their checkbooks.
And third, Griffiths’ approach brings high-level international humanitarian mediation into further disrepute. A recent essay in Foreign Affairs by Natasha Hall and Emma Beals, entitled “Humanitarian Blackmail”, outlines the recent failures of UN engagement with authoritarian states, including Myanmar.
They argue that “humanitarian negotiation are no substitute for conflict resolution.” Using the case of the captured Cyclone Mocha response, the essay states: “As conditions on the ground worsen, the junta has done nothing to alleviate the suffering of the people they govern, likely waiting for high-level visits from senior officials from the UN…such negotiations legitimize their role as the primary international interlocutor and decision-maker regarding aid.”
It goes on to castigate international aid actors for failing to “reach communities outside junta control…in places where the government consistently impedes, manipulates, or diverts aid, it may be more effective for humanitarians to work outside the UN and in ways that do not require official consent.”
Although there are significant programs already out of the SAC’s control, including cross-border assistance and expanding “resistance humanitarianism”, which has been a feature of aid work in eastern Myanmar conflict zones for decades, the issue is one of scale and increased funding in areas outside of UN operating zones: not easy to do when foreign donors have funneled so much post-coup aid through the UN Office of Project Services (UNOPS), which has had no qualms with cooperating with the SAC.
It is not clear if, as part of the official protocol, Griffiths was taken on a tour of the recently opened Maravijaya Buddha statue in Naypyidaw, the tallest sitting marble Buddha in the world, with Min Aung Hlaing as its prominent patron.
Any courtesy visit would be potentially more scandalous that shaking Min Aung Hlaing’s hand. In recent days, there has been criticism over prohibitively expensive visiting and photography fees for the general public.
The entrance fee for foreigners is US$10. Perhaps Griffiths could have started the fundraising right then and there?
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues on Myanmar