UN expert says Myanmar’s military has killed at least 8,384 civilians since the coup and calls the human rights situation “catastrophic”

The UN’s independent expert on Myanmar has described the country’s human rights situation as “catastrophic” and said a growing illicit economy is now helping to drive the civil war rather than merely follow from it. Special Rapporteur Kelley Anne Eckels-Currie spoke to journalists at a press briefing on Thursday 29 October and presented a new report, UN News reported.

Civilian toll

Myanmar has been in civil war since the military overthrew the elected government in February 2021, which triggered armed resistance across the country. Eckels-Currie’s report found that at least 8,384 civilians had been killed by the military since the coup, counting up to 15 September 2026.

The military authorities declared a so-called “100-day peace plan” that ran from 20 April to 31 July 2026. The Special Rapporteur concluded that the situation deteriorated rather than improved over that period. She said around 753 civilians were killed during those 100 days, and that the military and paramilitary forces were responsible for 89 per cent of the civilian deaths.

According to the expert, the military continues to use airstrikes and artillery against civilian infrastructure, including schools, health facilities, religious buildings, markets and displacement camps. She told journalists the harm was not accidental and described it as “intentional infliction of harm on civilian populations”. These are the findings of an independent UN expert; the account relayed by UN News did not include a response from the military authorities.

Aid obstruction and the “Four Cuts”

The Special Rapporteur said the military’s strategy rests on the “Four Cuts” doctrine, which seeks to sever food, resources, humanitarian access and support networks from any area that resists the regime. She found that humanitarian operations are deliberately obstructed through telecommunications blackouts, movement restrictions and checkpoints, which block food, medicine and fuel from reaching displaced communities. Aid workers, she said, face harassment, arbitrary detention, torture and killings.

A conflict economy

The expert’s central warning concerned money. As the formal economy shrinks under the weight of war and mismanagement, she said, criminal activity such as online scam centres, illegal mining, human trafficking and forced labour is filling the gap. Black-market profits, she explained, help finance the military’s weapons purchases, including from China and Russia, and sustain loyalty within the junta’s ranks.

She identified Chinese transnational criminal networks as the “backbone” of most of the criminal enterprises in Myanmar, operating through cryptocurrency platforms such as Tether and social media services including TikTok, Meta and X. Corruption in neighbouring countries, she added, is enabling the cross-border trafficking.

Disrupting these networks without harming civilians is difficult, she said: efforts to cut off Starlink internet access to scam centres, she noted, have also left humanitarian organisations and local communities without vital connectivity.

Wider humanitarian picture

On 8 October the UN Development Programme reported that conflict, displacement, economic disruption and climate shocks had led to the “simultaneous collapse” of shelter, healthcare, schooling and livelihoods affecting millions of people in Myanmar.