Milan (AsiaNews) – In a country like Myanmar where religious and ethnic affiliations have always been of primary importance, the number of children without identity papers is growing amid the ongoing civil war that broke out after the military coup d'état of February 2021.
At a landfill located in Insein district (see video), on the outskirts of Yangon, rubbish is piling up week after week; so are people seeking refuge in the slum that has emerged at the landfill. This is also where a non-profit organisation, Fondazione New Humanity International, operates.
The area’s first “residents” came in 2008 after Cyclone Nargis, which devastated large swathes of the country, killing more than 138,000 people and causing damages estimated at US$ 4 billion.
The government never bothered to address the situation, so entire families became de facto illegal squatters at a landfill. Without papers indicating ownership, the Myanmar military could drive everyone out at any time.
Children born at the site are not registered with the proper authorities. This is partially the result of the collapse of the country’s administrative system caused by the civil war, but also the consequence of the lack of trust towards the ruling military authorities.
New Humanity opened a kindergarten at the slum, but the future remains uncertain. The civil war shows no sign of abating, and no one knows when the children will get an identity.
Similarly, the situation is getting out of control at the boys’ school of the Nghet Aw San juvenile centre (Kaw Hmu district), which has more than 800 children held for a variety of reasons.
In Myanmar, the law allows children aged 11 and up convicted by a juvenile court to be jailed. More 300 boys are detained in Kaw Hmu. New Humanity offers vocational training to prepare them for life after they complete their sentence.
But the military has also rounded up and jailed orphans, children abandoned by their families (including disabled children), street kids and the children of people who joined the Civil Disobedience movement (CDM) and took part in peaceful protests against the military junta that seized power in February 2021.
In just over a year, their number has grown and it is unclear what can be done, not only because of large numbers but also because the children who suffered the traumas of war speak different languages.
The Rohingya are a case in point. Children from this Muslim minority, mostly from the western state of Rakhine (Arakan), find it hard to adapt, local sources say, partly because of linguistic and cultural differences, but also because of anti-Muslim prejudice that got worse since 2017.
Against this bleak backdrop, the work of the New Humanity International Foundation represents a ray of hope.
In fact, while the United Nations has been forced to pull out from some areas and is increasingly hard-pressed to provide humanitarian aid, small groups operating locally have managed to provide support to the local population.
New Humanity, which had 25 employees, now has 70, managing to grow in two very difficult years, marked by COVID-19 and war.
Still, for Myanmar, the legacy of the ongoing conflict will hardly be positive. Experts warn that the civil war is pitting the military against the whole country; for the first time, majority Bamar (Burman), who are Buddhist, have joined minority groups like the Shan, Kachin, and Chin, who are Buddhist but also Christian, Hindu and Muslim, with the shared aim of defeating the military at any costs.
Ethnic minority groups, who have their own militias, have fought against the Myanmar state demanding autonomy in their regions since independence from Britain in 1948.
While the CDM opposes the coup peacefully, the militias, composed mostly of young people, believe that violence is necessary for radical change.
According to local observers, as the conflict rages on (only yesterday the army razed 700 homes in the central region of Sagaing), with UN resolutions having little or no impact, young people reject divisions along ethnic lines, demanding a new identity for themselves and Myanmar.
