17 July 2021
(Saturday)
Economic Update: Htwe Htwe Thein, Professor, Curtin University, and Vicky Bowman, Director, Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (Chair: Edgard Rodriguez, International Development Research Centre)
12:00-13:00
Panel 4: Socio-Economic Issues (Chair: TBA)
13:10-15:10
Linda Calabrese, Max Mendez-Parra, Laetitia Pettinotti:
The Myanmar economy, COVID-19 and the current political context: issues and prospects for recovery
Mie Mie Kyaw:
Socioeconomic Challenges of Local Fishermen due to the Pandemic: Case Study, Kyauk Myaung Segment, Irrawaddy River, Myanmar
Ja Seng Ing:
Human Rights and Access to Worship Places in Myanmar
Sara Toedt:
How are fashion workers in Myanmar surviving the Covid-19 pandemic? Initial empirical findings of struggles and resilience
Panel Abstracts:
The Myanmar Economy, COVID-19 and the current political context: Issues and prospects for recovery
Linda Calabrese, Max Mendez-Parra and Laetitia Pettinotti, Overseas Development Initiative.
The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically impacted the Myanmar economy, with reduced domestic activity and disruptions in the main sources of foreign exchange, such as the tourism and garment exports, extractives sectors and remittances. Moreover, the pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of the current economic development model, based on potentially precarious sectors with limited domestic value addition and margins. This study reviews the impact of the pandemic on Myanmar’s trade and investment. Relying on secondary data, we produce economic estimates of the impact of the pandemic, focussing in particular on exports and other international economic linkages. We then try to assess whether Myanmar’s current economic model, based on extractives, unprocessed agricultural exports and low-wage manufacturing, fits the domestic needs for economic development and whether it can drive the country’s economic recovery. We discuss how the current model needs to be revised for ‘Building Back Better’ the Myanmar economy, taking into account not only economic but also climate, social and gender considerations.
Socioeconomic Challenges of Local Fisherman, due to the Pandemic
Mie Mie Kyaw, Myat Mon Kyaw and Khin San Htay, University of Mandalay.
The measure taken by this research to contain socioeconomic challenges of local fishermen in Kyauk Myaung segment, Irrawaddy River (hereafter study area). In pandemic, during stay at home period, not allowed for going outside including fishing, handling, selling, and transporting from one area to others, it makes crisis on socioeconomic situation of local fishermen in the study area. According to discussions with local fishermen in this study area, there are declining incomes, firstly, declining the fishing rate due to Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing as electric fishing that makes all fish to increasing the death rate as the eradication of from the fingerling as death to large fishes as sterile. Secondly, it was not allowed to go outside at the highest rate of spreading Covid 19, the price of fish is very low because there is no export as well as the lowest demand from local markets, about 80 % of local fishermen are facing the socioeconomic challenges and the rests have the other jobs as well. Therefore, it is necessary to have stakeholder mapping to conserve fisheries resource as well as to uplift the socioeconomic situations of the local fishermen for the sake of all communities beyond Covid.
Human Rights and access to Access to Worship Places in Myanmar - Ja Seng Ing, UN Women Myanmar
Myanmar has an obligation to ensure access to places of worship as part of its overall international obligation to guarantee freedom of religion or belief. Protecting these rights is crucial in a country as ethnically and religiously diverse in Myanmar. While the government allows these constitutionally recognized and other registered religious groups to worship and practice their religions as they choose. In practice, however, restrictions appear to be enforced primarily against religious minorities, and onerous bureaucratic processes make it difficult to establish new places of worship or renovate the existing worship places. This paper looks specifically at the current situation of the right of access to places of worship amidst ongoing COVID pandemic and military coup; the political, legal and administrative obstacles that prevent full enjoyment of this right; and how the legal framework, and its discriminatory or arbitrary enforcement have resulted in restrictions on the right to freedom of religion or belief – particularly for religious minorities in Myanmar.
How are fashion workers in Myanmar surviving the COVID-19 Pandemic? Initial findings of struggles and resilience
Sara Toedt, RMIT
Global garment production systematically exposes women to insecure employment, where both local and global events have an outsized effect on their lives and livelihoods. The Covid-19 pandemic has seen the rapid decline of fashion consumption globally, with billions of unpaid orders, and local lockdowns. At the start of 2020, 700,000 workers were employed in apparel production in Myanmar, in the first wave 60,000 workers lost their jobs. Most of these workers are women, having left their hometowns for work in the city. Feminist research has explored the gendered impacts of work in garment production and how local gender relations make women more vulnerable in unemployment (Anwary, 2017; Carswell, 2016; Kabeer & Mahmud, 2004). The pandemic has seen Myanmar garment workers at greater risk of domestic violence and has forced some into sex work. This paper sets out to explore what informs women’s decisions as they determine how to survive the pandemic. The paper draws on initial empirical findings from 24 interviews with women garment workers in Myanmar on how Covid-19 has impacted their livelihood strategies. We apply feminist and collaborative empirical methods to collect timely data on how gendered global garment production intersects with local gender relations to shape women workers lives in times of crisis.
Panel 5: Poverty, Food Insecurity & Social Protection Under COVID-19 and the Coup in Myanmar (Chair: Afke Jaeger (Innovations for Poverty Action—Myanmar)
15:20-16:40
Derek Heady (Innovations for Poverty Action—Myanmar):
Poverty, food insecurity, and social protection during COVID-19 and the coup in Myanmar: Combined evidence from household phone surveys and micro-simulations
Sophie Gaudet:
How could COVID-19 affect maternal and child nutrition? An exploration of impact pathways in Yangon, Myanmar
Russell Toth (University of Sydney):
Myanmar’s Microfinance Sector, Agriculture, under COVID 19 and the coup: Emerging Insights and New Challenges