Burma’s humanitarian crisis has reached staggering levels of suffering — with millions of people fleeing their homes and resettling across the border in Bangladesh or in camps within the country, while a civil war between the Burmese military and resistance armed militant groups rages. But a movement of passionate activists continues to operate under the radar, refusing to relinquish hope that a peaceful, democratic Burma is still possible with the peoples’ power and movement.
AJWS supports this movement, partnering with activists and organizations bravely protecting the civilians caught between two opposing, violent forces bent on destroying each other. The Peace and Development Initiative-Kintha (PDI) is one of these organizations — a grassroots group devoted to building peace and understanding across ethnic and religious divides in the devastated Rakhine State of western Burma, while also distributing critical humanitarian aid to internally displaced people.
AJWS began supporting PDI’s work in 2015, two years before the Burmese military launched a genocidal campaign against the Muslim-minority Rohingya people of Rakhine State. This year, when the Trump administration cruelly and suddenly cut nearly all foreign aid funding, PDI’s humanitarian aid assistance to Rohingya people and other war-affected communities was vastly diminished — and their partnership with AJWS became increasingly crucial.
To understand the current moment in Burma, explains PDI member Ko Mratt (name changed to protect their identity), we must look back before this wave of violence began.
Ko Mratt grew up in Rakhine, a region where Muslim communities and other ethnic minorities lived alongside Rakhine’s Buddhist majority.
“People move around by boat in Rakhine, and when you’d go the market you’d see this rich, diverse mix of people,” he says. “But after the elections in 2010, the state began sewing fear, division and mistrust amongst the people.”
Though his family was Buddhist, Ko Mratt was raised to respect his neighbors. This belief in equality and democratic ideals led him to become a student activist; he spent five years in jail for his activism, accused of dissent and illegal assembly.
“Rakhine is one of the country’s least developed states,” says Ko Mratt. “You have very poor infrastructure, poor education, poor healthcare, poor economic development — and people complain. The response of the government and the military? Blame Muslims and other minorities. This creates conflict — and that lead to violence.”
An ultra-nationalist Buddhist movement grew from this rift; riots broke out across the country targeting Muslim communities. In 2013, PDI was founded to fight this division, and unite communities in Rakhine through sports, music and art — as well as youth leadership and conflict resolution trainings — regularly reaching over 2000 people.
But in 2017, military violence against the Rohingya people exploded and more than 600,000 people fled to Bangladesh. In 2021, the Burmese military staged a coup, taking full control of the country, exiling or jailing elected leaders, and cracking down on activism. After short periods of relative peace, in 2023 the situation worsened as the military launched armed offensives against resistance movements, including the Rakhine State-based Arakan Army. Rakhine became completely isolated.
“Since 2023, Rakhine has been blocked by air, land and sea. They’ve blocked our communications, our trade, our transportation. Everything is sealed off,” says Ko Mratt, who was forced to resettle near the Thai-Burma border. “No matter if you are Rohingya or Rakhine Buddhist, today we are all facing a humanitarian crisis.”
Ko Mratt’s entire family left their home in Rakhine, joining him in exile from the region where they’d lived for generations. As hundreds of thousands of people fled violence (the UN estimates nearly 500,000 internally displaced people from Rakhine alone, as of October 2025), PDI was forced to adapt to a rapidly changing reality.
Some of PDI’s peacebuilding programs shifted online for the safety of participants, and they built an extensive network of allies for aid distribution of food and medicine. In late 2024, PDI was supporting more than 6,100 displaced people with cash assistance, food and medicine.
“Responding to this humanitarian crisis is a short-term solution,” says Ko Mratt. “The long-term solution will always be to address our political divisions and human rights issues through true accountability.”
Then, in February 2025, everything froze. Trump’s cessation of foreign aid gutted PDI’s ability to support war-affected families. AJWS and other partners continue to support PDI, but the financial hole left by U.S. foreign aid is massive. Ko Mratt and his colleagues — already spread across Burma and working together with extreme caution — must now re-evaluate how to push their mission forward. Today, PDI and their ally organizations are collaborating to maximize their impact while working with limited resources — and they also call out for solidarity outside Burma.
The challenges are great. But their belief that change is possible is unwavering.
“Burma is complex, but there will always be people trying to improve the situation,” says Ko Mratt. “This is our home. And to improve it, we can’t just sit on the sidelines and suggest what someone else should do. If not us, who else is going to make a change?”