2 April 2025: The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M) continues to urge an immediate and coordinated international response to the devastating twin earthquakes that struck Myanmar and Thailand last Friday.

The situation in Myanmar is catastrophic. Thousands of people are feared dead, thousands more remain trapped, hospitals are overrun and out of supplies, and repeated aftershocks threaten further destruction of homes and critical infrastructure.

Amid this devastation, the Myanmar military junta continues to conduct attacks. According to reports, it has launched air and artillery attacks in earthquake-affected areas including Magway, Bago and Sagaing Regions and Kachin, Karen, Karenni and Shan States. Emerging reports also claim that the junta is blocking relief efforts in hardest-hit Sagaing, including in areas of the region under National Unity Government (NUG) control.

In interviews with the Wall Street Journal, BBC, CNN, and Bloomberg, SAC-M’s Advisors urged the international community to direct emergency aid through the NUG, ethnic organisations, Myanmar civil society and their implementing partners to ensure it reaches all earthquake-affected communities. Speaking to the BBC World Service today, Chris Sidoti called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to urgently issue the arrest warrant for junta leader Min Aung Hlaing requested by the ICC Prosecutor in November last year. “There’s no excuse for this, it is scandalous that after five or six months no decision has been made on the Prosecutor’s application,” he said.

SAC-M has also sent correspondence to key officials urging the United Nations to act.

In a letter to the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy, SAC-M urged the UK as the “penholder” on Myanmar at the Security Council to urgently resume efforts to adopt a new Security Council resolution on the situation in Myanmar. Building on the Council’s last Myanmar resolution, UNSCR 2669 adopted in 2022, the new text should demand that local and international rescue teams be given full and immediate access to all earthquake-affected areas, impose embargoes on the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to the junta, and call for scaled-up financial support to Myanmar.

See SAC-M’s letter to the UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

SAC-M also sent a letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres urging that he request the UN Security Council to immediately hold an open meeting on the situation in Myanmar.

The meeting could request updates from key officials and help to support and coordinate the immediate deployment of humanitarian aid, medical assistance, heavy equipment and rescue teams by land, air and sea, including through cross-border channels and ethnic and civil society organisations capable of reaching communities most in need.

See SAC-M’s letter to the UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Furthermore, SAC-M sent a letter to UN Special Envoy on Myanmar Julie Bishop. SAC-M welcomed the Special Envoy’s call for a ceasefire across Myanmar. On 29 March, the National Unity Government’s People’s Defence Forces implemented an initial two-week pause in offensive military operations to ensure an all-hands emergency response to the earthquakes. On 1 April, the Three Brotherhood Alliance – comprising the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army – also announced a unilateral one-month pause in offensive operations to prioritise rescue and relief efforts.

Yet on the same day, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing rejected humanitarian pauses announced by ethnic resistance organisations as acts of aggression and declared that the junta’s military operations would continue.

SAC-M also urged the Special Envoy to push ASEAN, UN entities and the international community to respond, and encouraged her to support UN coordination, particularly in the absence of a formally-appointed Resident Coordinator in Myanmar.

See SAC-M’s letter to the UN Special Envoy on Myanmar Julie Bishop.