“We left everything behind — our home, our land, even our savings. We survive with little now, but it is enough that we are alive. But if peace returns, we can rebuild our lives from the start.”
— Displaced woman in the Northwest
The humanitarian needs set out in this HNRP comprise only one of four pillars of the UN TCF for Myanmar, which links critical humanitarian actions with complementary community development and resilience-building activities by development and peace actors. These complementary development and resilience-building actions are vital to enabling Myanmar to sustainably restore conditions of peace and dignified self-sufficiency over the longer term and immediately prevent vulnerable people from sliding into worse humanitarian conditions that are beyond the capacity of the humanitarian community to address. The current growth in humanitarian needs is unsustainable and beyond the realistic scope of humanitarian funding to manage, making the mobilization of complementary development funding critical to arresting the worsening trajectory. The social cohesion and civic space initiatives are also important scaffolding that will support resilient communities that can better cope with the threats being faced. This will also contribute to alleviating factors that contribute to addressing the root causes of the crisis in the longer term.
Shortcomings in the ability of development and peace actors to deliver on the complementary strategic priorities outlined in the TCF will have the most severe impact on already vulnerable and marginalized groups, including women, children, and persons with disabilities, leading to increased humanitarian needs across all sectors. This section outlines the consequences of development underfunding and how each cluster will be forced to adapt its planned response activities.
Early Recovery
If the TCF Strategic Priorities—particularly SP2 (Sustain essential social services and improve systems resilience) and SP3 (Empower people and strengthen community resilience)—are not funded or implemented in 2026, the humanitarian situation will deteriorate rapidly because foundational actions enabling life-saving services will not take place. Debris and waste management is central: without it, roads, clinics, schools and water points will remain blocked or unsafe, preventing health, protection, and WASH partners from reaching people and sharply increasing health, protection and displacement risks.
Education
In the event that complementary TCF strategic priorities (especially SP 2) are not supported during 2026, this will mean an automatic increase in people’s vulnerability and more reliance on humanitarian assistance, including an exponential increase in the number of children in need of support to access education services on the humanitarian side, or even dropping out of school entirely. The Cluster is already struggling with limited resources to sufficiently support the current caseload, and an increase in the caseload will threaten to break down the education in emergencies provision as well.
Food security
Food security development partners are already integrated within the cluster coordination mechanisms and strategies at the national and subnational levels, including through the Agriculture and Rural Development Group, the INGO Forum, and specific technical working groups. Collaboration with development actors is also underway to complement activities in food security, including enhancing access to critical agricultural input markets, provision of agriculture extension services, and the strengthening of agri-food systems and supply chains. Development interventions to improve communities’ access to and capacity to use early warning information, focused on community-based disaster risk reduction and anticipatory action, will reduce the impact of climate-related hazards faced by vulnerable households in many parts of the country every year. Bridging this gap will allow longer-term and more impactful assistance to be provided both before and immediately following the initial relief assistance.
If agriculture and livelihood programmes under SP2 in the TCF are not sufficiently funded, essential agricultural services and market systems will be disrupted. Failure to implement SP2 would further disrupt essential services and agricultural support systems, worsening the situation of 29,000 IDPs who could deteriorate from phase 2 (stress) to phase 3 (crisis), likely increasing the humanitarian caseload. Evidence highlights that sustained TCF investments in local market functionality and agricultural capacity are more cost-effective than repeated emergency interventions, ensuring sustainable food security and reducing long-term humanitarian costs. If support for community resilience programmes under SP3 is limited, this would severely impact local food production capacity. Without these TCF interventions, the humanitarian caseload would increase beyond the 8.5 million people currently facing acute food insecurity within the 227 townships of the HNRP.
Health
If the development sector fails to sustain relevant disease surveillance systems and routine health programmes aimed at disease prevention, deadly disease outbreaks are at risk of spreading unnoticed, potentially affecting 25 million people. If already alarmingly low immunization coverage will further deteriorate, mosquito populations will thrive and allow malaria and dengue outbreaks to expand, and water-borne diseases like cholera will multiply because of poor quality drinking water and open defecation. In the absence of adequate diagnosis and treatment, other communicable diseases like Leprosy, TB, and HIV will surge, increasing the risk of multidrug-resistant forms. Lack of access to life-saving reproductive health services, including family planning and sexually transmitted infections (STI) care, increases the risk of unintended pregnancies and STIs, including HIV/AIDS. Maternal and neonatal mortality will increase as women will not have access to safe delivery places, as well as due to a lack of trained midwives.
Nutrition
Without adequate financing or implementation of the TCF Strategic Priorities, particularly SP2 (sustaining essential services) and SP3 (livelihood and resilience strengthening) nutrition needs are projected to increase by an estimated 12-18 per cent, leading to an additional 320,000–407,000 people in need of nutrition assistance. Without continuity of basic maternal and child health services and livelihood support, the number of children requiring therapeutic feeding is projected to increase by approximately 25 per cent within 12 months, substantially increasing humanitarian response costs and placing additional strain on an already overstretched health system. A lack of development investment could lead to service collapse, worsened food insecurity, and higher rates of wasting and stunting. Investing in preventive nutrition actions, such as local food production and maternal care, is more cost-effective than emergency treatment; every $1 invested in prevention saves up to $16 in humanitarian response costs.
Protection
Failure to financially support or implement TCF strategic priorities would significantly heighten protection risks across Myanmar. Without the complementary development actions, communities will continue to face collapsed public services, deepened poverty, limited livelihood opportunities, and the erosion of local protection mechanisms. This will accelerate negative coping strategies such as survival sex, child marriage, hazardous child labour, unsafe migration, and trafficking.
In the absence of community resilience, access to basic services and social cohesion programming, community-based protection structures would remain weak or non-functional, increasing reliance on humanitarian protection actors for basic safeguarding functions that development actors normally support. The breakdown of essential services will further exacerbate risks of GBV, child abuse, forced recruitment, family separation, and exposure to mines/unexploded ordnance.
For populations such as Rohingya communities, displaced households, women and girls, persons with disabilities, LGBTQI+ individuals, and children, the absence of TCF activities would deepen exclusion, increase their vulnerability, reduce access to livelihoods, and fuel discrimination. This would drive a significant rise in humanitarian protection needs that cannot be met through emergency programming alone.
Shelter/NFI/CCCM
The absence of development funding and action is already imposing substantial pressure on the humanitarian Shelter/NFI/CCCM Cluster. Development actors are critical to mainstreaming disaster risk reduction and resilience-building strategies, empowering affected populations to withstand recurrent climatic disasters, reducing vulnerability, and fostering self-recovery. While underdeveloped in recent years, this work is critical and will be fully coordinated with humanitarian Shelter/NFI/CCCM actors to ensure that activities are aligned, particularly to mainstream preparedness and durable solutions where protracted social cohesion issues exist. Livelihood support from development actors is key to facilitating resettlement, local integration, and overall self-reliance, especially with an inclusive approach encompassing both youth and adults.
If the TCF strategic priorities (particularly SP2 and SP3) are not adequately supported in 2026, the impact on shelter/NFI/CCCM needs will be significant. The lack of development funding will leave many affected populations without resilience-building opportunities, such as disaster risk reduction and community-based preparedness. This will likely lead to a 15-20 per cent increase in vulnerable populations requiring emergency shelter, NFIs, and CCCM support following predictable events, such as monsoon rains or floods. The absence of adequate development funding will also significantly hamper the effectiveness of the Cluster's initiatives to promote resilience and self-sufficiency among crisis-affected populations, as development programmes are essential not only in preventing more people from sliding into the humanitarian caseload, but also fostering long-term stability and self-reliance. Without robust development action, the Cluster’s ability to implement critical initiatives will be severely constrained. This will likely result in a growing number of individuals backsliding into humanitarian needs, further perpetuating a cycle of dependency. Proactive investments in resilience and preparedness can prevent the higher costs associated with emergency humanitarian interventions in the future.
WASH
If the TCF—particularly strategic priority 2 (service continuity and resilience) and strategic priority 3 (community systems and risk reduction)—is not financed or implemented in 2026, WASH needs will rise and the response will remain largely reactive. Absent sustained systems investment, failure rates of small water schemes will increase, pre-monsoon repairs and light rehabilitation will be missed, reliance on costly emergency water supply will grow, surges of AWD and other waterborne diseases will become more frequent and severe, and overcrowded, poorly lit facilities will heighten protection risks, particularly for women and girls.
Without TCF action, an additional 5–10 per cent of the 2026 WASH people in need—approximately 450,000–900,000 people—is likely to fall back into humanitarian need, especially in Rakhine (protracted camps), Ayeyarwady and Mon (flood-prone lowlands), Chin, Kayah and Kayin (conflict-affected uplands), and Magway and Sagaing (displacement corridors). Funding TCF priorities stabilizes basic services, reduces disease and protection risks and lowers overall costs; without them, per capita costs increase and humanitarian caseloads grow year on year.