Myanmar’s women cut off

In central Myanmar, something as ordinary as a packet of sanitary pads has become hard to find in camps where women are still living a year after the March 28, 2025 earthquake. Aid workers say the shortage is hitting women displaced in Sagaing and Mandalay, where damaged roads, military restrictions and continuing attacks have turned basic hygiene into a daily struggle. (abc.net.au) The earthquake measured 7.7 near Sagaing, and the United Nations Population Fund said a second 6.4 shock added to the destruction across central Myanmar. The agency said its April 28, 2025 appeal sought $12 million to reach 680,000 people, with women and girls needing menstrual supplies, maternal care and protection services. (myanmar.un.org) This did not hit a peaceful country trying to recover from one disaster. Myanmar has been in civil war since the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021, and the United Nations says conflict and disasters had already displaced about 3.6 million people by 2026. (unocha.org) That overlap is what makes the story so brutal: women are not just fleeing rubble, they are also fleeing airstrikes and front lines. Human Rights Watch said that after the quake, junta officials delayed visas, confiscated medicine, harassed aid workers and left opposition-held areas of the quake zone largely without outside help. (hrw.org) Even the places people run to for safety are being hit. ABC reported that a monastery sheltering about 100 people in Katha, Sagaing region, was struck by a military air attack on March 20, 2026, killing monks and civilians in a building that had been serving as refuge. (abc.net.au) For women, the missing items are specific and immediate. The United Nations Population Fund says overcrowded makeshift shelters and damaged clinics raise the risks of poor menstrual hygiene, unsafe births and gender-based violence, which means the loss of pads, privacy and clean water can quickly become a health emergency. (myanmar.un.org) Aid groups have tried to plug that gap with “dignity kits,” which usually include sanitary items, underwear, soap and other essentials for women and girls. United Nations aid workers said those kits were part of the first emergency response in Mandalay and Sagaing, but reaching people took more than 10 hours by road from Yangon because bridges had collapsed and routes were blocked. (news.un.org) A year later, the recovery is still uneven and deeply shaped by gender. A March 31, 2026 briefing from the Myanmar Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group said the quake affected more than 9.1 million people in the hardest-hit areas and left women, girls and marginalized groups facing sharper barriers to services, safety and livelihoods. (reliefweb.int) The result is that “relief” in Myanmar is not just about tents, rice or clearing debris. It is also about whether a woman in a camp can get pads, whether a pregnant mother can reach a clinic, and whether a truck with basic supplies can cross a checkpoint without being turned back. (myanmar.un.org)