The Nippon Foundation Committed to Delivering Food Aid to IDPs in Myanmar

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) announced on September 12 that more than 13.2 million people in Myanmar are now moderately or severely food insecure. This accounts for about one fourth of the Southeast Asian nation’s total population of about 54 million.

I am not sure what kind of survey was conducted in the conflict-stricken country to come up with this number. But considering the hardships internally displaced persons (IDPs), especially children, are facing across Myanmar, The Nippon Foundation is making its utmost efforts to provide them with humanitarian assistance.

This stems in part from my own childhood experience when I miraculously survived the U.S. firebombing raid on Tokyo on March 10, 1945, during World War II, which killed about 108,000 people and destroyed my school and countless other buildings in downtown Tokyo.

I will never forget finding the bodies of our neighbors and attaching nametags to them. Since then, I have lived with a strong desire to realize a world where everyone can live in peace and security, determined to do everything I can to provide food and other humanitarian assistance to those in need, especially children, in conflict areas.

Under the present circumstances, distribution of food assistance in Myanmar is far more challenging than one might think. But the foundation’s staff based in that country, while keeping an eye on their own safety, are working with a strong sense of mission in the face of increasing challenges due to soaring food prices and the political crisis in the wake of the military takeover in February 2021.

Regarding the humanitarian assistance that the Japanese government commissioned The Nippon Foundation to provide, we are working closely with the Red Cross to try to deliver it to IDPs as quickly and effectively as we can.

Under a project launched in March 2022, the foundation has so far managed to deliver rice to 25,040 IDPs in areas controlled by seven ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and is working hard to reach more IDPs in these areas.

With the memories of my boyhood in my heart, I am determined, together with our staff in Myanmar, to continue our activities to deliver food aid under challenging conditions so that no child in the country goes to sleep hungry.

The Nippon Foundation’s activities in Myanmar began in 1976 with medical support for persons affected by leprosy, and over the years since then we have engaged in roughly 90 projects in the country. Since I was appointed Special Envoy of the Government of Japan for National Reconciliation in Myanmar in February 2013, I have travelled to meetings with the government, the military and EAOs either in Myanmar or neighboring Thailand some 130 times with the aim of achieving a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA). So far, 10 out of almost 20 EAOs have signed the NCA, but my mediation efforts have stalled following the military takeover.