Myanmar’s Rohingya and other minorities face renewed terror, illicit economies boom

  A new UN Human Rights report paints a grim picture of Myanmar, nine years after the 2017 military violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority and five years after the military coup. The Office has documented escalating violence against the Rohingya and other minorities alongside a booming, unregulated rare earths mining industry that is devastating the environment and ethnic communities in Kachin and Shan states.

The report, covering June 2025 to May 2026, finds Rohingya civilians were trapped between two armed actors — the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army — which exacerbated protection concerns to unimaginable levels due to airstrikes, arson attacks, displacement and denial of assistance, and systematic abuse and persecution against the Rohingya.

In areas it controls across northern Rakhine, the Arakan Army has mirrored the military's own denial of Rohingya identity — referring to them as "Bengali," a term that casts them as foreign migrants rather than a recognized minority of Myanmar. It also subjected communities to arbitrary arrest, torture, sexual violence, forced labour and land confiscation. Credible local sources indicated 2,353 instances of Rohingya forced labour in northern Rakhine in a single month — January 2026 — including 75 involving children.

“Across northern Rakhine, the Arakan Army has perpetrated arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, instances of enforced disappearance, forced labour and recruitment, unlawful confiscation of land and residential property, and the destruction of villages, religious and cultural sites, caused renewed Rohingya displacement,” the report states.

“Children are systematically used for labour, with witnesses describing workers as young as six years old clearing jungle, constructing buildings and doing menial work for Rakhine families. In one case, a child was forced to clear bones and skulls of victims of a massacre.”

Attempts at fleeing to seek safety have become increasingly deadly. The report states that 2025 was the deadliest year on record for Rohingya undertaking maritime journeys to seek safety in other countries, with 892 people dead or missing at sea, a toll already being matched in 2026: by May, 4,665 people had attempted the crossing, with 280 reported dead or missing. Those who stay face military blockades that pushed staple food prices up 31 percent between February and May 2026 alone and, by the end of April, nearly 150,000 Rohingya had newly registered as refugees in Bangladesh.

“This report depicts a picture of suffering, misery, and cruelty on multiple levels and across the country that is heartbreaking.

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UN Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk

Illegal mining for rare earths and its consequences

The report also documents the rapid, unregulated expansion of rare earths mining in Kachin and Shan states — extraction that surged under the control of armed groups including the United Wa State Army following the 2021 coup. Mining sites expanded from 215 pre-coup to 590 by end of May 2026, with trade in these minerals peaking at 1.4 billion US dollars in 2023.

The human cost of that boom, the report finds, falls heaviest on women, workers and local communities. Toxic leaching chemicals — including ammonium sulphate and ammonium chloride — have contaminated waterways with arsenic, cadmium and lead, destabilized mountainsides and triggered fatal landslides; an explosion at one unregulated site in Namhkan township killed roughly 50 people in a single incident on 31 May 2026.

“Environmental contamination impacted maternal and reproductive health, with local documentation efforts confirming sharp surges in miscarriages, severe bleeding during pregnancy, childbirth, or after delivery, and pregnancy complications attributed to heavy metal and chemical exposure,” the report says.

Women are disproportionately exposed, both through contaminated water collection and through what the report describes as institutionalized sexual coercion in mining camps — a practice interlocutors called "Ayaw" (mixed positions) under which job retention was explicitly conditioned on sexual services. Lack of economic opportunities, displacement and forced conscription triggered the influx of women into the mining sector. “This aggravated risks of sexual violence and harassment by supervisors, guards, and militia members who operated with absolute impunity,” the report says.

Migrant workers, meanwhile, face debt bondage, unpaid wages held back for up to a year, and exposure to hazardous chemicals with no training or protective equipment.

“Without knowledge and equipment, interlocutors stated that workers developed symptoms like acute respiratory distress, severe headaches, chemical burns, and gastrointestinal illnesses,” the report states. “Prolonged exposure caused the accumulation of toxic agents, leading to chronic pulmonary, kidney, and liver diseases.”

Toxic wastewater from leaching pools discharged directly into downstream agricultural land also made the soil barren or significantly affected yield and quality, reducing farmers’ incomes, it adds.

Türk’s recommendations call on Myanmar's military and armed actors to end grave violations against civilians, on States to refrain from legitimizing military rule and stop arms supply, and on businesses to ensure due diligence in rare earth supply chains and access to effective remedy.

“I call on all States, companies and investors to undertake serious soul-searching with respect to their actions – or inaction; to ask: is this fair and just for the people of Myanmar? Can the societal and environmental harm of their activities even be reversed? Their own reputations and their credibility are on the line,” he said.