Thread by @MelynMcKay

Breaking my PhD write up-imposed Twitter hiatus to comment briefly on #COVIDー19 in #Myanmar. This will be very elliptical, leaving out numerous considerations for the sake of a short(er) thread.

If you follow Myanmar, you'll have seen lots of stories about Buddhist meditation centres being used for quarantine. This might suggest that religious social work actors and networks (parahita) are responding as thoroughly as they have to other man made and natural disasters.

However, outside urban centres, this has not really been the case. For instance, one Ma Ba Tha affiliated women in Kayin, with whom I've consulted since 2017, remarked that the age of Buddhist monks and their communal living makes them vulnerable to the virus.

As a result, the monks who have been very involved in the past in attending to the needs of communities at the grassroots level are unable to mobilise in the ways they might have in the past. That also means they aren't acting to raise community donations in the same way.

Other parahita actors and networks are stepping in to raise those funds and organise activities, but the absence of religious leaders has a significant impact on communities and their ability to respond effectively.

Religious actors very often fill the spaces the Myanmar union government can't or wont reach - that means ethnic minority areas, for instance, parts of Northern and central Rakhine State.

These areas have *also* been dealing with large scale displacement, the impacts of which they have mitigated through community fundraising. Now we have a situation where these communities have also lost their access to remittances as migrant workers return and factories close.

As such local grassroots actors, parahita groups, CSOs, etc., are doing what they can to lead the COVID response in their communities, but they lack the coordination/fundraising power of religious leaders, and rely heavily on community donations which are likely to dry up.

There are many theories as to why Myanmar has seen / reported relatively low infection rates. I wont get into those here. I will only say that response actors should not expect religious actors to behave in the same way they have before - for a myriad of reasons, they can't.

For those who are in regular contact with Myanmar gov't figures, this is the kind of thing that it would be great to raise. If you have the ear of / are a donor, this is something to think about as you redirect funds to COVID response. (end thread)