Myanmar is no longer the most violent place in the world

In June 2024 the former MCC Cambodia & Myanmar Peace Coordinator, Audrey Thill, published an article in Foreign Policy on How Myanmar’s Wood Funds Its Brutal Military. It’s a fantastic article pulling back the curtain on the illicit economy driving conflict and deforestation. The article is on Myanmar but also looks at similar issues in…

Podcast: Distributing aid in Myanmar at great risk

The MCC Relief, development and podcast recently hosted an interview with one of our partner staff in Myanmar. I’m sharing the podcast and transcript below. For security reasons our partner is not identified in the interview and the partner staff is going by Mr. Khong. It’s a wonderful opportunity to hear about the situation directly…

Myanmar: Saying No To War

In October, the Three Brotherhood Alliance – a partnership of three armed ethnic groups in the north – launched an offensive campaign against the military junta that lead the coup in February 2021 (and which, to varying degrees, has been the dominant force in the country since taking power through a coup in 1962). The…

25 years later, Prey Veng is landmine-free.

Last year, a new sign went up on the Prey Veng Waterfront declaring that the province was officially mine-free. Prey Veng is the third most populous province in Cambodia but lacks an urban center with the population spread among rural villages. The fighting in Cambodia came to end twenty-five years ago when the final Khmer…

Cambodian Prime Minster condemns Russian invasion of Ukraine

Historically, Cambodia has been the victim of proxy wars between nations such as Thailand, Viet Nam, France, Japan, China, U.S.S.R., and the United States. In the 1940s, King Norodom Sihanouk negotiated a bloodless end to the Japanese occupation of Cambodia and peaceful independence from France. In the decade that followed Cambodia emerged as a bright…

Update from Myanmar: April 2022

I wanted to share an update from a check-in earlier this week with one of our partners in Myanmar. I am not including our partner’s names for safety reasons and have removed any specific details that might identify them. I’m also not including the details of their current MCC project. I might share this in…