2025 INSIGHT REPORT

The People's Voice (ပြည်သူ့အသံ)

Community Socio-Economic Sentiment Survey | Myanmar | 2025

REPORT CONTEXT

The "People’s Voice" initiative was established by the Hit Tine (ဟစ်တိုင်) collective to bridge the widening information gap between the lived realities of Myanmar’s citizens and the international humanitarian response. This longitudinal survey activity serves as an independent, community-driven response designed to amplify the concerns of those navigating the country's complex conflict.

The primary objective of this 2025 Insight Report is to provide donors, international organizations and CSOs with a grounded understanding of the immediate needs and long-term anxieties of the population. 

By documenting how 401 unique voices across the nation are navigating daily life, this report seeks to inform evidence-based advocacy and ensure that aid strategies remain aligned with the rapidly evolving hardships on the ground.

I. Executive Summary

In 2024, communities across Myanmar were shocked by hyperinflation, food scarcity, and rapid deterioration of the political and economic landscape. By 2025, that initial shock has hardened into a protracted daily struggle for survival, one with no foreseeable end in sight.

The defining finding of this year's survey is chronicity. Nearly 70% of respondents report experiencing their primary hardships for more than six months. This signals not a temporary crisis, but the collapse of household-level coping mechanisms: savings are exhausted, food stocks depleted, and social safety nets eroded.

Three structural shifts distinguish 2025 from 2024:

• Economic hardship has become embodied: men are no longer simply struggling to find work, many report they cannot safely leave their homes due to fear of forced conscription.

• The education crisis has deepened: school disruption has progressed from a logistical barrier to a long-term developmental threat, raising alarm over a generation without foundational learning.

• Urban vulnerability is newly prominent: Yangon and Mandalay now register among the highest concentrations of distress, signaling a shift from rural IDP camps to urban poverty as the primary locus of need.

II.  Methodology Note

This report is based on 401 structured community sentiment survey responses collected in 2025 through Hit Tine platform. Responses were gathered across Yangon, Mandalay, Shan, Sagaing, Karen, Magwe, Bago, and other regions, as well as from diaspora respondents. While the total dataset comprises 401 responses, the thematic analysis presented in this report was conducted specifically on records from the top regions (Yangon, Mandalay, and Shan) to ensure depth and consistency in qualitative coding. Open-ended qualitative responses were thematically coded. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity while preserving original meaning; all respondents remain anonymous. Geographic coordinates and respondent identifiers are not included in this report to protect safety.

This survey does not claim statistical representativeness of the full Myanmar population; it reflects the voices of community members who chose to participate and should be interpreted as qualitative community intelligence rather than population-level survey data.

III. Engagement & Survey Metrics

A total of 401 unique community responses were analyzed for this report. Participation was near gender-equal and spans all major geographic regions of Myanmar, including diaspora voices.

Geographic Distribution — Top Response Areas

IV. Key Trends & Thematic Analysis

Analysis of open-ended responses yielded four dominant thematic clusters. Food insecurity and inflation continue to dominate  unchanged from 2024 but the remaining three themes reflect qualitatively new dynamics in 2025.

Theme 1 — Food Scarcity & Inflation (34.4% of responses)

Food insecurity remains the foremost concern, consistent with 2024 findings. However, the framing has shifted: responses emphasize not just price increases, but the structural inability to afford adequate nutrition even when food is physically available. The convergence of hyperinflation, currency depreciation, and income collapse has pushed many households to a subsistence threshold.

Theme 2 — Conflict & Displacement (12.5% of responses)

Conflict-related displacement has intensified, with respondents in Karen State, Shan State, and Sagaing reporting loss of homes, destruction of livelihoods, and forced relocation. A new dynamic in 2025 is the intersection of displacement with unemployment displaced families lack not only shelter but access to labor markets in host communities.

Theme 3 — Education Concerns (12.0% of responses)

Education disruption has emerged as a distinct and urgent thematic cluster, particularly in Rakhine State and Sagaing Division. Respondents articulate fear of a 'lost generation' children whose foundational learning has been permanently interrupted. Beyond physical access, parents report profound psychological distress at the inability to ensure educational continuity during formative developmental years.

Theme 4 — Unemployment & Economic Exclusion (11.7% of responses)

Unemployment in 2025 is structurally distinct from prior years. Rather than a labor supply-demand mismatch, the primary driver is fear: specifically, the fear of forced conscription while commuting. Male respondents in Mandalay and Bago Divisions report choosing to remain confined at home, resulting in a secondary household income collapse that compounds food insecurity.

V. Cross-cutting Issues: Structural Analysis

The Security–Livelihood Nexus

A defining feature of 2025's data is the emergence of conscription as an economic barrier. Unlike 2024, where unemployment was primarily attributable to market conditions, 2025 data reveals a new dynamic, households where able-bodied workers cannot participate in the labor market due to physical safety risks. This creates a compounding loop - loss of income accelerates food insecurity, which deepens psychological stress, which further reduces economic participation.

Chronicity and the Exhaustion of Coping Mechanisms

The 'six months or more' duration finding is the most alarming metric in this year's data. Community-level resilience savings, informal credit, food stores, and family support networks have a finite horizon. At this level of chronicity, households are no longer managing a crisis; they are structurally impoverished. Short-term emergency relief models are no longer sufficient; multi-year livelihood stabilization approaches are required.

Intergenerational Risk: Education as a Humanitarian Priority

Twelve percent of all responses independently raised education concerns  comparable in volume to conflict and unemployment. This challenges the conventional prioritization of education as secondary to immediate physical needs. In Sagaing and Rakhine State, safety barriers to school attendance are producing cohort-level learning loss that will require sustained, multi-year intervention to address.

VI.  Implications for Programming

The following implications are drawn directly from the 2025 survey findings. They are intended to support donor partners and CSO implementing organizations in aligning their strategies with the realities documented in this report.

For Donor Partners

• Funding priorities should reflect the urban vulnerability shift. Yangon (25.9% of responses) and Mandalay (18.0%) registered among the highest concentrations of distress. Current funding models that prioritize rural IDP settings may not reflect where need is growing fastest. Urban food security, rental support, and mobile outreach should be considered alongside established rural programming.

• Grant cycles should match the duration of need. Nearly 70% of respondents report experiencing their primary hardship for more than six months. Short-cycle emergency grants (6–12 months) are structurally mismatched to a crisis that has become chronic. Multi-year funding horizons with adaptive management provisions would better serve the current reality.

• Education disruption warrants frontline investment. Education concerns were raised by 12% of respondents comparable in volume to conflict displacement and unemployment. In Sagaing and Rakhine, school closures lasting months or years point to cohort-level learning loss. Funding for community-based learning models, including offline tools and trained community learning facilitators, should not wait for stability to return.

• Livelihood programming should account for conscription-related immobility. The data reveals a new form of unemployment where men cannot safely leave their homes to work. Livelihood interventions that require physical mobility may not reach those most affected. Home-based income generation, remote work facilitation, community microenterprise, and digital skills models address both the economic and security dimensions of this challenge.

For CSO Implementing Partners

• Psychosocial support should be embedded across programme streams, not treated separately. Psychological distress appears throughout the data - across food insecurity, displacement, education, and unemployment responses. Integrating basic psychosocial support into existing programming through frontline staff training is more realistic and sustainable than standalone mental health interventions.

• Community conflict preparedness should be supported and kept locally controlled. Communities in prolonged conflict areas have developed informal knowledge about navigating security risks. CSO partners can support the formalization of this knowledge through community-led preparedness planning, adapted from disaster preparedness models but tailored to armed conflict, conscription, and surveillance risks.

This report reflects the experiences of 401 individuals navigating one of the most restricted and volatile environments in the world. The patterns they describe which are chronic hardship, compounding pressures, and the erosion of basic coping capacity pointing to a crisis that is deepening, not stabilizing. The implications outlined above are grounded in what communities themselves have reported, and they are offered to support more responsive and evidence-informed programming in the period ahead.