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Announcement of New Website: Rohingya Today (RohingyaToday.Com) Dear Readers, From 1st January 2019 onward, the Rohingya News Portal 'Rohingya Blogger' will be renamed and upgraded as 'Rohingya Today'. Due to this transition to a new name, our website will be available at www.rohing...

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Maung Zarni, leader of the Free Rohingya Coalition, speaks at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo on Thursday. | CHISATO TANAKA By Chisato Tanaka, Published by The Japan Times on October 25, 2018 A leader of a global network of activists for Rohingya Mu...

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Oskar Butcher RB Article October 6, 2018 Every night in an unassuming shop space located in Mandalay’s 39thStreet, Lu Maw and Lu Zaw – the remaining members of the Burma’s most famous comedy trio, the Moustache Brothers – present their show: a curious combination of comedy, political sa...

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A demonstration over identity cards at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh in April, 2018. Image: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images. By Natalie Brinham | Published by Open Democracy on October 21, 2018 Wary of the past, Rohingya have frustrated the UN’s attempts to provide them with documenta...

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By M.S. Anwar | Opinion & Analysis The Burmese (Myanmar) quasi-civilian government unleashed a large-scale violence against the minority Rohingya in the western Myanmar state of Arakan in 2012. The violence, which some wrongly frame as ‘Communal’, was carried out by the Burmese armed forces...

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Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar wait to be let through by Bangladeshi border guards after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj MS Anwar RB Opinion November 12, 2018 Some may differ. But I believe the government of Bangladesh is ...

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By Maung Zarni | Published by Anadolu Agency on December 15, 2018 US will not intercede, and Myanmar's neighbors see it through economic lens, so international coalition for Rohingya needed LONDON -- The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday overwhelmingly passed a resolution ca...

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Aman Ullah  RB History August 25, 2016 The ethnic Rohingya is one of the many nationalities of the union of Burma. And they are one of the two major communities of Arakan; the other is Rakhine and Buddhist. The Muslims (Rohingyas) and Buddhists (Rakhines) peacefully co-existed in the A...

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(Photo: Soe Zeya Tun, Reuters) RB News  October 5, 2013  Thandwe, Arakan – Rakhinese mob in Thandwe started attacking Kaman Muslims on September 28, 2013. As a result, 5 Kaman Muslims were mercilessly killed and 1 was died in heart attack while escaping the attack. 781 Kaman Mus...

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Rohingya families arrive at a UNHCR transit centre near the village of Anjuman Para, Cox’s Bazar, south-east Bangladesh after spending four days stranded at the Myanmar border with some 6,800 refugees. (Photo: UNHCR/Roger Arnold) By UN News May 11, 2018 Late last year, as violent repressi...

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(Photo: Reuters) Joint Statement: Rohingya Groups Call on U.S. Government to Ensure International Accountability for Myanmar Military-Planned Genocide December 17, 2018  We, the undersigned Rohingya organizations worldwide, call for accountability for genocide and crimes against...

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RB News December 6, 2017 Tokyo, Japan -- Legislators from all parties, along with Human Rights Now, Human Rights Watch, and Save the Children, came together to host the emergency parliament in-house event “The Rohingya Human Rights Crisis and Japanese Diplomacy” on December 4th. The eve...

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By Wyston Lawrence RB Petition October 15, 2017 There is one petition has been going on Change.org to remove Ven. Wira Thu from Facebook. He has been known as Buddhist Bin Laden. Time magazine published his image on their cover with the title of The Face of Buddhist Terror. The petitio...

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A human rights activist and genocide scholar from Burma Dr. Maung Zarni visits Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Extermination Camp and calls on European governments - Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Denmark, Hungary and Germany not to collaborate with the Evil - like they did with Hitler 75 ye...

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“Myanmar is still the third-most malnourished country in Southeast Asia”

By Thin Lei Win 
January 27, 2016

The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) in Myanmar is facing a funding shortfall of $51 million to meet all the needs till the end of 2016. The organisation, which has a 250-strong staff in the country, says it provided food and cash assistance to 1.2 million people in 2015. This includes emergency food assistance to half a million victims of disasters and conflict.

Residents of a camp for people displaced by war in Kachin State line up for food. International funding for IDPs is running low. Photo: Kaung Htet / The Myanmar Times

Myanmar Now chief correspondent Thin Lei Win spoke to Dom Scalpelli, WFP country director in Myanmar, about what the shortfall means, why Myanmar is still food insecure, and what eradicating hunger and malnutrition would mean to the country.

Question: How concerned are you about the funding shortfall? Or is this part of a long-standing problem?

Answer: The funding shortfalls are a common part of our business, unfortunately. It’s like running a fire department without having the money for the trucks or the petrol in the trucks. Imagine, each time there’s a fire, you need to quickly run around the city and ask for money.

This is a bit like what happens when a flood happens in Myanmar or conflicts displaced people in Shan State. If it’s a new emergency we typically have to run after new money. It’s a constant challenge but that’s the way the system is at the moment. 

What would the shortfall mean in terms of humanitarian assistance?

When there is a funding shortfall, we have to prioritise life-saving activities. This means nutritional support to malnourished babies and children under 5 years old, and pregnant and nursing mothers, assistance to the internally displaced people, especially those that are confined to camps in Kachin, Rakhine and Shan states, and the floods- and landslides-affected people. 

Things like the daily school meals programme - nutritious snacks to about 230,000 children in primary and pre-schools in very food insecure areas - to encourage parents to keep sending their children to school have to be put as a second priority. Same for other development programmes like rehabilitating community infrastructure like dams, fish ponds, roads and bridges, although it helps to prevent or mitigate future shocks and builds resilience. 

Myanmar is a food surplus country, and yet a lot of communities, especially in ethnic areas, are food insecure, leading to malnourished people and children. Why is that?

It’s true that Myanmar is a rice surplus country and rice is often equated with food. But rice is not in and of itself nutritious in the way it is eaten here. Not many people eat brown rice. It has to be as white as white, and that means all the nourishment are gone. 

Also, when you’re talking about a place like Chin State, just to get from one town to another could be three hours in a good vehicle. The food may be available but it’s expensive. We saw this in the floods when a bag of rice costs $100 when it normally should have been $30, which was already quite high. So access is another issue. 

Food insecurity is common among disadvantaged populations, like the landless, smallholders and minority ethnic groups, due to limited or inequitable access to land and resources, poor agriculture conditions and low resilience. Most farmers only have access to very small areas of land. This limits their ability to cultivate sufficient amount of staple food or vegetables for their household needs during the whole year. Agriculture conditions are not optimal. In the dry zone, soils are sandy and rainfalls are low. In mountainous areas, arable land is limited and cultivating cycles too short to allow the soil to regenerate. 

In ethnic areas, the issues related to access to land and livelihood sources are more important due to movement restrictions and/or insecurity. 

What are some of the most food-insecure places in Myanmar and why?

Essentially, border areas and the central dry zone are the most food insecure areas in Myanmar. In Chin, it’s caused by remoteness and isolation, and lack of job opportunities and arable land. In Rakhine it’s movement restriction and lack of access to job opportunities and land, for all communities in Rakhine. For the central dry zone, it’s poor soil and agriculture techniques.

How bad is malnutrition in Myanmar?

Myanmar is still the third-most malnourished country in Southeast Asia after Timor-Leste and Cambodia. There’s no reason for it. It’s a country that’s rich in resources. It’s just access to these resources, education and behavioural issues, and sometimes cultural practices that need to change to promote better nutrition. 

The worst malnutrition in Myanmar is in the border with Bangladesh in the northern part of Rakhine State. The average stunting rate for under-5 children in Myanmar is about 34 percent, meaning one in every three children under five years is too short for his age. On the border with Bangladesh that is over 50 percent. (Editor's note: Northern Rakhine State's Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships are home to the roughly 1 million-strong stateless Rohingya Muslim minority.)

There were many short people in Japan after the [Second World War] but now if you go to Tokyo there are lots of tall people. It really only takes a generation to break this cycle. It’s doable. Nutrition is not just about food. It’s about health and sanitation. In South Asia for example, bad sanitation ultimately leads to bad nutrition. Things like encouraging exclusive breastfeeding in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life accompanied by nutritious food after 6 months may not be encouraged everywhere according to various cultures. 

Malnutrition can have permanent impacts too, right?

Yes. If a malnourished girl - someone in a food-insecure area here in Myanmar - typically gives birth at too early an age, chances are the child will be malnourished with some sort of deficiency, physical or mental. 

If the baby doesn’t have enough nutrition for the first 1,000 days then the brain will not develop properly. Think about multiplying that across the whole population. There are studies in countries where the economic loss can be, on average, 11 percent of the GDP just because its babies are malnourished. That cycle can be broken. If, while she’s pregnant, she starts to consume adequate, nutritious food and good, clean water etc, and continues to breastfeed exclusively after birth and gives nutritious food afterwards, the child can grow up healthily especially up to the age of two. 

But it doesn’t stop there. The child has to go to school so they understand the importance of nutrition. And the longer a girl stays in school the more likely she’ll give birth at a later age, meaning healthier babies, and the more likely she’ll space her babies.

What can be done to address the problem? What should the new government do?

We’ve just started with the government of Myanmar and a few other organisations to produce fortified foods. We want to try and put (that) on to the market and for us to be able to purchase it for our nutrition programmes. I understand Myanmar is the largest per capita rice consumer in the world, with more than 200 kilograms per person per year. If people are consuming that much of a certain food and it’s fortified, that would go a long way to helping (malnutrition) even though it’s not the perfect solution.

In areas where fortified rice might not reach for now, we have to make sure the populations have access to nutritious food and there’s diversification in agriculture and access to markets. For a country like Myanmar to address this is to make it a priority. You need champions at different levels of society whether politicians, educators, celebrities and sportspeople. Myanmar doesn’t produce qualified nutritionists yet. The willpower and the commitment is important. 

Myanmar government launched the Zero Hunger Challenge in late 2014. It’s a first step. It’s a global initiative and there’s a draft action plan on nutrition and food security, with clear responsibilities so that by 2025 there won’t be any stunted children in Myanmar. 

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