The deteriorating humanitarian situation in Myanmar and its increasing impact on civilians requires a comprehensive and strategic response to address the growing needs. This 2025 HNRP maintains a national scope to be able to address the country-wide impacts of the crisis and has prioritized 5.5 million people in need of emergency assistance, a slight increase from 5.3 million people targeted with assistance in 2024. The target has been driven by the severity of need, taking into account projected access, capacity, and funding. The response will only focus on life-saving interventions to address the most urgent needs, requiring a total of $1.1 billion to deliver this assistance in 2025.
The humanitarian planning process involved strong engagement with development actors on the UN Transitional Cooperation Framework (TCF) to ensure complementarity and avoid overlap. The TCF aims to join up humanitarian action with complementary community resilience and basic service activities by development actors to prevent more people from sliding into humanitarian need.
Centrality of protection
The commitment to the centrality of protection is clearly demonstrated by the adoption of the first strategic objective, which is entirely centred around protection. The aim is to ensure that protection remains a priority at both the strategic and operational responses of various clusters. By embedding protection considerations at every level, its critical importance in humanitarian efforts is reinforced and the necessity for collaboration among all stakeholders emphasized, to create a safer environment for vulnerable communities across Myanmar.
The humanitarian response will continue to be grounded in and driven by a collective protection risk analysis as a prerequisite for programming, advocacy, and dialogue with duty bearers for the purpose of influencing behaviours and policies to achieve protection outcomes.
By embedding accountability to affected people (AAP) and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) principles into all aspects of humanitarian programming, humanitarians will actively prevent and respond to incidents of exploitation and abuse, ensuring that the rights and dignity of affected individuals are upheld. This dual focus not only enhances the effectiveness of protection interventions but also builds trust and empowers affected populations, reinforcing our commitment to accountability in humanitarian action.
Localizing the response
Local organizations are the backbone of the Myanmar response, particularly in conflict-affected areas. Throughout 2024, there have been significant efforts to advance localization. The HCT is empowering local partners through the implementation of its Localization Strategy, which was endorsed in October 2023. Immediate priority actions include resourcing, growing local capacity, promoting equitable partnerships, enhancing participation and representation of local actors in coordination and decision-making fora, and improving humanitarian preparedness and response efforts. In support of these localization efforts, donors and intermediary agencies are increasingly recognizing the need to exercise maximum flexibility in funding modalities, from the initial recipient to the final implementing partner, and ensuring appropriate risk sharing and mitigation.
Delivering in hard-to-reach areas
As part of the response strategy, humanitarian partners will work to assist vulnerable populations in hard-to-reach areas through various response modalities. The 2025 HNRP aims to assist some 3.3 million people in the most severely restricted areas that are considered to have “extreme” constraints in the most recent access severity monitoring. For 2025, enhancing access to people in need within these hard-to-reach, conflict-affected regions is a key priority for the humanitarian community. Clusters are working to safely expand their operational reach, especially in areas with largescale displacement, while advocating for more comprehensive, regular, and predictable access. The pressing need for multi-sectoral assistance in these hard-to-reach areas calls for innovative and practical solutions to empower local partners to reach those who are most vulnerable with a full package of assistance wherever possible.
Further information on the response can be found in section 2.6 Accountable, Inclusive and Quality Programming.