FILE PHOTO: A view of Mae La refugee camp following a halt in US foreign aid that led to the closure of health services inside the camp on the Thai-Myanmar border at Tha Song Yang district, Tak Province, a Thai-Myanmar border province, February 4, 2025. - Reuters
GENEVA: The UN's special rapporteur on Myanmar on Monday (March 17) lambasted the US foreign aid cuts as a shameful act of betrayal that would cause untold suffering and death in the war-ravaged country.
Tom Andrews, a former US congressman, tore into the swingeing cuts, saying they were politically-motivated, based on distortions and being carried out in the worst possible manner.
He urged the 47 countries on the UN Human Rights Council to take a joint stand and speak up as a matter of conscience.
"The sudden, chaotic withdrawal of support, principally by the government of the United States, is already having a crushing impact on the people of Myanmar," Andrews told a press conference.
"Questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of aide programmes can and should be addressed, as should concerns about burden-sharing.
"But this is not about either. It is about making politically-motivated and demonstrably false declarations about corruption, waste and abuse that will cause immense suffering and cost untold numbers of lives.
"It is about betrayal. This is shameful."
Myanmar's ruling junta seized power in coup on February 1, 2021 that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government, ending a ten-year experiment with democracy and plunging the South-East Asian nation into bloody turmoil and a humanitarian crisis.
Myanmar has been rocked by fighting between numerous ethnic rebel groups and the army. The civil war has displaced more than 3.5 million people, according to the UN.
Andrews said more than 6,300 civilians had been killed; 19.9 million people, a third of the entire population, now required humanitarian assistance; while more than half of the population has fallen into poverty.
He said people in Myanmar were receiving aid that "is literally keeping them alive, and the abrupt termination of this support is going to kill them.
"This is just a catastrophe that is unfolding. It's unnecessary and it's cruel."
Andrews took aim at not just the depth of the cuts, but the way in which it was being done, with no opportunity for creating contingency plans, or chances for other countries to phase in support.
"It is unconscionable, it is outrageous and we need to take a stand," he said.
"This is the worst possible way to go about this.
"It is politics in its worst form, and it's sacrificing human lives to make a bad political point, based upon fabrications and distortions."
Andrews said Myanmar had become a hotbed of criminality, having become "the largest supplier of opium in the world", with scam centres and sex trafficking flourishing.
Going after those financing the junta was like playing whack-a-mole, and "the way you can be sure that you're not facilitating weapons transfers is if you stop doing business with Myanma Economic Bank", he added.
"More people are now killed or maimed by landmines in Myanmar each year than in any other country," he said.
Andrews said banks had increased their due diligence, terminating their relationships with junta-controlled institutions.
"These actions are making a difference: junta military procurement using the international financial system has dropped by more than a third," he said.
UN special rapporteurs are mandated by the UN Human Rights Council but are independent experts who do not speak for the United Nations itself.
Andrews will present his latest report to the council on Wednesday. - AFP
