Myanmar envoy tells UN coup quadrupled Yangon poverty, displaced 3.7 million nationwide

Myanmar’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, told a UN high-level meeting in New York on 28 July that the 2021 military coup has stalled the country’s urban development, pointing to a quadrupling of poverty in Yangon and the displacement of more than 3.7 million people nationwide. Speaking at the midterm review of the New Urban Agenda, the ambassador said the military, led by junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, halted a National Urban Policy that the elected civilian government had been developing before the coup. Kyaw Moe Tun has continued to represent Myanmar’s UN seat since 2021 under the authority of the opposition National Unity Government (NUG), rejecting the junta’s legitimacy. According to the ambassador, urban poverty in Yangon rose from 10% in 2017 to 43% in 2023, while more than 120,000 homes have been destroyed or burned by the military since the coup. He cited UN-HABITAT data showing the IDP surge has pushed more people into informal settlements, straining basic services, and UNDP findings that junta-linked crime and extortion in Yangon’s peri-urban areas have restricted residents’ mobility and access to work. Beyond the immediate housing figures, Kyaw Moe Tun said Myanmar’s broader urbanization trend, now at 32% of the population as of 2025, has been reshaped by conflict rather than planned growth. He described a population forced to choose “survival over prosperity” amid junta airstrikes, food weaponization and the destruction of residential areas. The ambassador called on the international community to support ending what he called the military dictatorship, saying the NUG and allied groups under the Steering Council for Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF) are working toward a federal democratic union. The post Myanmar envoy tells UN coup quadrupled Yangon poverty, displaced 3.7 million nationwide appeared first on ENG.MIZZIMA.COM.