“Work with us, from the start”: what inclusive recovery means for women with disabilities in Myanmar

Author: Alexandra Peard

When the earthquake struck on 28 March 2025, Khin Phyu Wai was in Ayeyarwady, far from the epicentre, but the force was enough to shake the building she was in and send people running. At first, she could not find her crutch.

“Other people ran away. They did not remember me, to help me run away with them,” she recalls. “If my crutch had been damaged, it would have been impossible to escape.”

Khin Phyu Wai is Project Facilitator with the Myanmar Independent Living Initiative (MILI), an organization run by and for people with disabilities, and her experience was far from unique. An estimated 4.8 million women and girls were affected across the hardest-hit areas, and for those with disabilities, the impact was immediately compounded.

A Rapid Gender Analysis coordinated by UN Women as co-chair of the Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group found that aid distribution did not account for people unable to stand in long queues or leave their homes, and information was rarely accessible to people with physical or sensory disabilities.

One year on, when MILI’s teams visit communities, they still encounter people who panic at ordinary sounds.

“I just slid a glass in the cupboard,” says Thae Thae Mar, MILI’s Programme Manager, recounting a visit to a community member in Mandalay. “That sound made her jump up and run. She said it was just like the sound she heard during the earthquake.”

Those who acquired disabilities during the earthquake are navigating physical change, social stigma and economic collapse, while processing grief.

“Before the earthquake they were able... Now they became disabled, and they cannot accept that yet,” says Thae Thae Mar, who herself has a disability from childhood. “They feel shame. They withdraw. They do not even leave their house.”

For one of Khin Phyu Wai’s friends, a business-owner before the earthquake, it has meant total withdrawal. “She said ‘I am like a dead person. I don’t want to do anything,’” Khin Phyu Wai says. “During the day she locks herself in her room. Only in the evening, she comes out and practises walking with crutches. Let alone working again – she cannot yet accept that she is now a person with disability.”

The economic losses compound everything. The earthquake destroyed workshops, crops, equipment and transport overnight, and left no one able to afford the small services and trades that often sustain people with disabilities. When whole communities lose everything, these incomes often disappear first and come back last.

MILI has been providing psychosocial support, cash assistance and assistive devices in earthquake-affected areas – reaching people whose needs long predate the disaster. Among them is 13-year-old Ma Phoo Phoo Zaw, who spent her school years being carried to class by her father. She felt embarrassed and disempowered; her father’s time escorting her limited his ability to work. For years the family had wanted to buy her a wheelchair but could not afford one. After the earthquake, with costs surging and household incomes reduced across the region, it felt more impossible than ever.

A wheelchair delivered by MILI changed everything. For the first time in her life, she went to school on her own. “The wheelchair is like my own pair of legs,” she said, “It lets me go wherever I want.”

One year on, Thae Thae Mar and Khin Phyu Wai are clear about what still needs to change: sustained psychosocial support, accessible assistive devices and a humanitarian system that genuinely includes people with disabilities, from planning through to recovery.

“People with disabilities are human,” says Thae Thae Mar. “They should be able to enjoy their human rights. To make sure they are not left behind, work with us from the start.”

MILI provides psychosocial support, assistive devices and advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities across Myanmar, and is a UN Women partner.