The Hidden Disability Rights Crisis in Post-Coup Myanmar

Millions of persons with disabilities in Myanmar are in peril. Since the military coup of February 2021, Myanmar military forces have executed, tortured, and sexually assaulted civilians with disabilities. The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar warns that unless the international community takes urgent steps to recognize the “hidden” disability rights crisis within the broader, ongoing “humanitarian catastrophe,” persons with disabilities in Myanmar will have dim hopes to escape their chilling reality of repression and violence.

A Chilling Reality

Persons with disabilities in Myanmar have long faced formidable barriers and systemic exclusion due to stigmatization, discrimination, inaccessible infrastructure, and ineffective comprehensive social and legal protections. The February 2021 military coup has only exacerbated these enduring challenges. Last year, UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews sounded the alarm on the mounting human toll:

“The junta is doubling the impact of its extensive use of landmines to crush nationwide resistance. Not only is it forcing civilians to walk in mine-affected areas in front of its military units, it is blocking victims’ access to critically important aid, including medical care and prosthetics. [...] Now amputees are being forced into hiding to avoid harassment and arrest as a missing limb has become a source of suspicion that they are part of the resistance. Losing a limb is a challenge anywhere, but in Myanmar an amputation is being seen as evidence of a crime.”

On November 13, 2025, at an event co-organized by HPOD and the Harvard University Asia Center's Southeast Asia Initiative, Special Rapporteur Andrews launched his thematic report documenting how persons with disabilities have both been specifically targeted and disproportionately affected by the military junta. While it was previously known that the military junt’s use of anti-personnel mines has generated record-level disabling casualties, the Special Rapporteur broke new ground by exposing the particular and differential effects of the junta on persons with disabilities.   

The junta has actively attacked, tortured, and executed persons with disabilities. Junta forces have killed persons with disabilities when they do not receive warnings of impending attacks or are unable to flee. For example, Amnesty International has documented how soldiers had subjected people with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities to executions or arbitrary detention and torture because of their perceived “failure” to comply with a soldier’s order. Others have been burned alive in their homes. Persons with disabilities' mobility devices and prosthetics have been destroyed by soldiers or abandoned in order to escape air strikes. Women with disabilities have been sexually assaulted by soldiers, as part of the junta forces' broader, unchecked use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. As the Special Rapporteur recognizes, many of these instances may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.   

The junta’s widespread violence has displaced hundreds of thousands of persons with disabilities. Internal displacement severs persons with disabilities from their support networks, and forces them to struggle to access limited humanitarian aid in hostile, inaccessible environments. Displacement camps and hiding sites are often located in hilly or mountainous areas, with steep, uneven and muddy pathways that are challenging or impossible for many persons with mobility or other impairments to navigate. Many displaced people rely on hunting, foraging or traveling long distances to tend to their farm fields or otherwise obtain food or clean water, posing major challenges for those with mobility impairments. For women and girls with disabilities, displacement increases the risk of sexual and gender-based violence. Disability rights advocates have been imprisoned, forcing organizations of persons with disabilities to operate underground or flee into exile.

For those not immediately affected by the widespread violence or displacement caused by the junta, progress made toward disability rights under the previous civilian government has come to an abrupt halt. The public health system has effectively collapsed, eliminating rehabilitation services and blocking the flow into the country of essential assistive devices (like wheelchairs and prosthetics), in addition to basic medicines. The military’s destruction of health care facilities and pervasive security checkpoints have forced persons with disabilities to either make longer, more perilous journeys to access lower-quality treatment, or to forego care entirely. Compounding the debilitating healthcare infrastructure, the country’s economic collapse has made persons with disabilities the first to lose jobs and also forced families to resort to selling essential equipment and going without medicines and treatment.

The Call to Action

Meeting the differential needs of persons with disabilities affected by this crisis requires first recognizing these needs. Humanitarian actors must urgently recognize and make their programs responsive to the outsize risks faced by persons with disabilities. Widespread displacement and the junta’s ongoing restrictions on humanitarian assistance have left many persons with disabilities without access to humanitarian assistance, as well as medical, rehabilitation or other support services. Even so, in 2024 the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that humanitarian actors have failed to prioritize disability inclusion in Myanmar.

The Special Rapporteur suggests that the massive scale of the post-coup humanitarian crisis might have led donors to prioritize interventions for the general population rather than disability-specific programs. Thus, he urges donors and humanitarian actors to actively engage and empower local organizations of persons with disabilities in delivering humanitarian aid, including by prioritizing them for robust funding schemes. This call reflects a recognition that these organizations are often “best placed to meet the needs of affected communities and possess the expertise, knowledge, trust, and networks to provide effective assistance.”

At the same time, guaranteeing the rights of persons with disabilities in Myanmar demands far more than humanitarian aid: a coordinated, multifaceted campaign is required to overturn deeply entrenched stigmas and establish the rule of law. The hidden disability rights crisis will remain invisible until the world recognizes that achieving human rights for all in Myanmar is impossible without an end to the military junta’s oppression. Thus, in his report, the Special Rapporteur urges the international community to mount a stronger, more principled campaign to isolate the junta and support emerging democratic institutions. The lack of political will to address this devastation is a failure that threatens the future of freedom for people with disabilities everywhere.

Post-Colonial Complexities

While international actors will be essential to bringing about a measure of relief for Myanmar’s persons with disabilities, it is critical that efforts to curb the junta’s excesses also are attuned to the complexities of Myanmar’s colonial heritage. The Special Rapporteur decries the junta’s sytematic weaponization of stigma and spiritual narratives to reinforce its rule. Rightly so: the junta’s abuses are invariably informed by deeply held religious and cultural views—such as the karmic linkage between impairments and past transgressions—that have long justified neglect and discriminatory practices. Informed by firsthand accounts from persons with disabilities, Special Rapporetur Andrews’ report astutely notes how views have fomented profound stigma, including among persons with disabilities themselves, that has engendered self-isolation, shame, and internalization of blame, even contributing in extreme cases to suicide. 

At the same time, rarely are religious and cultural perspectives on disability monolithic. Within Myanmar’s religious and cultural traditions one will inevitably find countervailing resources of compassion, mutual obligation, and dignity that can and do support disability justice. Thus, any international human rights response must therefore avoid perpetuating a neocolonial binary wherein “local culture” is treated as inherently regressive and “global” or “Western” norms as the singular font of moral insight. Instead, effective contextualization and localization of international human rights norms will require serious and deep engagement with religious and cultural leaders in Myanmar to uplift strands of thought that resist stigma and affirm the full humanity of persons with disabilities. To this end, the Special Rapporteur recommends the creation of an interfaith working group of prominent religious leaders to promote greater understanding and acceptance of disability.

Thus, international actors will have to strike a balance between rejecting both the junta’s use of spiritual and cultural narratives to legitimize exclusion and also broader colonial patterns that depict local belief systems as uniformly oppressive. Rather than substituting external expertise for local knowledge, international actors should work in partnership with organizations of persons with disabilities, religious leaders, and community networks who are already drawing on indigenous moral frameworks to contest stigma and practice care. The Special Rapporteur’s extensive collaboration with local disability leaders in preparing his report should serve as a model for the international community to follow not only to address the hidden disability rights crisis in Myanmar, but also to advance disability rights protections throughout the world.