By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Human rights conditions in Myanmar have sunk to a new low, with widespread abuses against the Rohingya minority and a booming illicit economy driven partly by illegal rare-earth mining deepening civilian suffering, the U.N. said on Tuesday.
The U.N. human rights office report, covering June 2025 to May 2026, said unrelenting conflict, military violence and a growing “conflict economy” were exposing civilians to severe hardship. Both Myanmar’s military and the Arakan Army, which controls much of Rakhine State, had committed widespread, systematic violations against Rohingya communities, including killings, torture, forced recruitment, forced labour, arbitrary detention and displacement. Neither responded to a Reuters request for comment.
Nine years after the 2017 exodus that forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee, and following further abuses since the 2021 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi, the community remains subject to systematic discrimination, the U.N. said. The military engineered an election earlier this year that allowed junta chief Min Aung Hlaing to become president.
The military has continued relying on air strikes, arson and aid restrictions to impose fear and maintain control more than five years after the coup, killing at least 8,075 civilians since 2021, including 1,774 women and 1,074 children — a toll the U.N. said is likely far higher.
The Myanmar military has previously said it conducted limited airstrikes on military targets in response to violent seizures of towns and villages by insurgents and what it describes as terrorist groups.
Internal displacement had risen to 3.6 million people, the U.N. said, while 12.4 million face acute hunger and some 400,000 mothers and children suffer acute malnutrition.
In northern Rakhine, the U.N. accused the Arakan Army of arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual violence, forced labour and land seizures targeting Rohingya, including blocking displaced Rohingya from returning while resettling non-Rohingya on their land. Satellite imagery showed roughly 2,000 acres seized, with witnesses describing children as young as six used for labour and former detainees reporting torture and deaths in custody.
The report also highlighted rapid expansion of illegal rare-earth mining in Kachin and Shan states, where collapsed rule of law has fuelled illicit industries financing conflict. Satellite imagery showed 302 new mining sites in Kachin since 2021, and a jump in Shan State from 12 sites before the coup to 85 after.
The U.N. said rare-earth trade flows peaked at an estimated $1.4 billion in 2023, largely feeding China’s market. Toxic runoff has polluted waterways and farmland, contributing to miscarriages and chronic disease locally, with contamination also reaching rivers flowing into Thailand, where tests found elevated arsenic, lead, mercury and manganese, it said.
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin; Additional reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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