Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan: Myanmar Humanitarian Programme Cycle 2026 - Nutrition Cluster Strategy
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Executive summary
Myanmar faces a rapidly worsening humanitarian and nutrition crisis driven by conflict, repeated displacement, restricted access to essential services, and collapsing livelihoods. Since the 2021 military takeover, internally displaced persons have risen from around 300,000 to 3.6M people as of October 2025 [1] https://data.unhcr.org/en/country/mmr with the most severe impacts in Northern Rakhine, Sagaing, Kachin, Northern Shan, Kayah, and parts of the Southeast. In many of these areas—particularly Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Rathedaung—nutrition and health services have been disrupted or suspended, severely limiting life-saving treatment for children and pregnant and lactating women.
Recent September 2025 food insecurity and malnutrition analysis (2025/2026) analysis confirms “Serious” to “Critical” levels of acute malnutrition, driven not only by food insecurity, but also high disease burden, poor water and sanitation, sub-optimal infant and young child feeding practices, deteriorating maternal nutrition, and the erosion of basic health and nutrition services.
The Nutrition Cluster is committed to delivering predictable, timely, and scalable nutrition responses based on humanitarian principles, sustainable partnerships, and context-driven prioritization. Despite access challenges, essential interventions have been maintained through community-led and low-profile delivery modalities including community nutrition volunteers, mother support groups and mobile outreach teams. The 2026 Strategy focuses on high-burden geographies, community-based service delivery, strengthened partner capacity, and flexible multi-year financing, while ensuring protection, accountability, and duty of care for frontline workers. These priorities aim to reverse worsening trends and safeguard the most vulnerable populations.
The 2026 strategy also emphasizes duty of care for frontline workers, protection mainstreaming, and accountability to affected populations as integral to all operations, ensuring responses are safe, ethical, and inclusive.