Myanmar’s Most Vulnerable Face Rations Cut

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http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/myanmars-most-vulnerable-face-rations-cut/



The UN World Food Programme has confirmed it will be cutting food rations for internally displaced persons.

Myanmar’s Most Vulnerable Face Rations Cut
By Emanuel Stoakes
July 25, 2015

The World Food Programme (WFP) is set to cut rations to vulnerable communities in conflict-hit states across Myanmar, the organization has revealed.

The news was confirmed last week in an email from WFP in response to questions from this writer. The email said, pending a “final agreement with the Government of Myanmar, starting from August 2015, reduction of food rations will take place for all IDPs (internally displaced persons) in Kachin, northern Shan and Rakhine States.” The respondent added that essential provisions for nursing mothers and young children will be protected, however.

The move will have the harshest impact in the country’s Rakhine and Kachin states where an aggregate total of several hundred thousand displaced people rely on aid for survival. In westerly Rakhine state, more than 800,000 ethnic Rohingya are rendered stateless and deprived of basic human rights as a result of government policy, resulting in minimal access to healthcare, education, and the means to make a living. Around 140,000 are confined to squalid IDP camps as a result of two bouts of violence which broke out in 2012, which saw whole neighborhoods razed and hundreds killed; those immured in the camps are entirely reliant on external support in order to meet their basic needs.

In Kachin state, located in the far north of the country, an estimated 100,000 people have been made homeless by fighting between ethnic Kachin rebels and Myanmar’s national army, known as the “Tatmadaw,” since a ceasefire broke down in 2011. Northern Shan state also hosts Kachin IDPs, in addition to ethnic Shan, Kokang, Chinese, and Lisu populations displaced by fighting between the government and assorted rebel groups.