People in need and people targeted
The dire humanitarian situation in Myanmar and its increasing impact on civilians require a comprehensive and strategic response to address the growing needs. Guided by analysis of the two main humanitarian shocks that defined the crisis and the geographic areas affected, the 2026 HNRP has reduced its scope to concentrate on the people most impacted. The plan targets 4.9 million people in need of emergency assistance, with 2.6 million people at intersectoral needs severity levels 4 and 5 to be prioritized if resources are insufficient. The target has been driven by severity of needs, taking into account projected access, capacity, and funding. The decrease from previous years reflects the projected lack of resources and capacity to meet the needs of a wider group and is not reflective of a decrease in the number of people who would be targeted if more resources were available. The response will only focus on life-saving and protection interventions to address the most urgent humanitarian and protection needs, requiring a total of $890 million to reach all people targeted for humanitarian assistance, or $521 million to deliver this assistance only to the prioritized group in 2026.
The humanitarian planning process involved strong engagement with development actors on the 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.
People in need, targeted and prioritized
People in need, people targeted and people prioritized
Locally-led response
Local organizations remain the backbone of Myanmar’s humanitarian response, particularly in conflict-affected and hard-to-reach areas. In the context of the broader humanitarian reset, efforts are increasingly focused on shifting from localization toward locally-led response models that place local actors at the centre of decision-making and implementation. Building on the HCT-endorsed Localization Strategy (October 2023) and the area-based coordination model for Myanmar (November 2025), the humanitarian community will advance on critical priority actions to implement the humanitarian reset agenda—strengthening local leadership and coordination capacities, fostering equitable partnerships, promoting direct access to resources, and enhancing participation and representation of local actors across coordination and strategic decision-making platforms. Donors and intermediary agencies are progressively recognizing the importance of flexible funding modalities, fair risk sharing, and multi-year support that enable a sustainable and principled locally-led response, ultimately ensuring that humanitarian action is more contextualized, inclusive, and accountable to affected people.
Delivering in hard-to-reach areas
As part of the response strategy, humanitarian organizations will prioritize assistance to vulnerable populations in hard-to-reach, conflict-affected areas through various response modalities. The 2026 HNRP aims to assist some 3.5 million people in the most severely restricted hard-to-reach areas. Clusters are working to safely expand their operational reach, especially in areas with large-scale displacement, while advocating for more comprehensive, regular, and predictable access. The pressing need for multisectoral 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 and gender-sensitive package of assistance wherever possible.
Further information on the response can be found in section 2.5 Accountable, Inclusive & Quality Programming.
Risk-informed planning
Risk-informed planning in Myanmar is highly complex and critical due to the convergence of three major crises: protracted armed conflict, extreme vulnerability to natural hazards (including the 2025 earthquake), and an overarching humanitarian emergency.
The 2025 INFORM risk index places Myanmar at number three in the world in terms of exposure to hazards overall, with 9.2/10 for human-induced hazards (current conflict intensity and projected conflict risk) and 7.2/10 for natural hazards. It is ranked 9th globally in terms of exposure to natural hazards, largely due to the risk of river flooding (8.8/10), tsunami (8.3/10), and earthquake (8.2/10). Additionally, Myanmar was ranked as the country second most affected by the impacts of extreme climate events over the last two decades, based on the Global Climate Risk Index score. Its geographic location puts it at risk of heatwaves, flooding, and cyclones, with climate change likely to make these events more intense.
The humanitarian community in Myanmar annually updates the inter-agency Emergency Response Preparedness Plan to reinforce its readiness to respond rapidly to a range of potential hazards, including recurrent flooding. The plan is complemented by more detailed operational inter-agency contingency planning at subnational levels. All of these plans seek to improve effectiveness of a humanitarian response by reducing both time and effort and to enhance predictability by establishing predefined roles, responsibilities, and coordination mechanisms.
The Anticipatory Action Task Force was formed to bring together humanitarian stakeholders implementing anticipatory action initiatives to jointly develop and implement the inter-agency Myanmar Anticipatory Action Framework, while aligning to the extent possible with other anticipatory action initiatives. The first collaborative Anticipatory Action Framework will focus on tropical cyclones and is to be completed ahead of the cyclone season in the first half of 2026.
Transition
Within the earthquake response area, the transition to recovery is well underway, although serious pockets of need remain and additional resources are required for effective recovery. The Early Recovery Cluster, activated in 2025 following the March 2025 earthquake, is expected to gradually phase out of the humanitarian response operation in the course of 2026 and transition to longer-term recovery activities as part of the TCF.
However, with the main driver of humanitarian needs remaining the ongoing conflict and downstream impacts on basic human needs and livelihoods, the conditions for a broader transition from relief to recovery are not yet in place.