YANGON: International media will be allowed to cover Myanmar’s upcoming junta-run polls, election authorities said Wednesday, an apparent invitation for foreign press to scrutinize the deeply disputed vote.
Myanmar’s junta has “shattered the media landscape” with censorship and intimidation since staging a 2021 coup that sparked a civil war, Reporters Without Borders says.
Local journalists bore the brunt of the crackdown while foreign media quit the country en masse, with AFP the only international news agency maintaining a full in-country bureau.
The junta has touted polls starting December 28 as a path to peace, but the vote will be boycotted in rebel-held enclaves and monitors are dismissing it as a ploy to disguise continuing military rule.
The junta-stacked Union Election Commission said in a statement “both local and international news media will be allowed to cover” the election, due to unfold in phases over a matter of weeks.
The junta-run information ministry “will scrutinize and endorse eligible international media organizations,” said the notice in state newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar.
It is not clear what that process will entail and which media outlets will be approved for access to a country which has been largely cut-off by the military coup.
Myanmar’s media landscape blossomed during its decade-long democratic thaw, with new domestic outlets springing up and foreign journalists rushing in.
Since the military took back power many of those outlets have shut, moved to rebel-held areas or operate from exile in neighboring Thailand.
Myanmar ranked third among the world’s leading jailers of journalists in 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Rights groups have said the election cannot be legitimate with democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi deposed and jailed in the coup, and her vastly popular National League for Democracy party dissolved.
Protesting against the poll has been made punishable by up to a decade in prison.
Diplomatic sources have told AFP the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will not send election observers for the vote.
Numerous rights groups lobbied the 11-nation bloc to hold back monitors, lest they lend legitimacy to a vote which they say will be neither free nor fair.
Myanmar invites foreign media coverage of junta-run election
https://arab.news/rk6at
Myanmar invites foreign media coverage of junta-run election
- The junta stacked Union Election Commission said in a statement “both local and international news media will be allowed to cover” the election, due to unfold in phases over a matter of weeks
35 million Nigerians ‘risk hunger after global funding collapse’
- The UN can only aim to deliver $516 million to provide lifesaving aid to 2.5 million people this year, down from 3.6 million in 2025, which in turn was about half the previous year’s level
ABUJA: Nearly 35 million Nigerians are at risk of hunger this year, including 3 million children facing severe malnutrition, the UN said, following the collapse of global aid budgets.
Speaking at the launch of the 2026 humanitarian plan in Abuja, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Mohammed Malick Fall said the long-dominant, foreign-led aid model in Nigeria is no longer sustainable and that Nigeria’s needs have grown.
Conditions in the conflict-hit northeast are dire, Fall said, with civilians in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states facing rising violence.
BACKGROUND
UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Mohammed Malick Fall said the foreign-led aid model in Nigeria is no longer sustainable and that the country’s needs have grown.
A surge in terror attacks killed more than 4,000 people in the first eight months of 2025, matching the toll for all of 2023, he said.
The UN can only aim to deliver $516 million to provide lifesaving aid to 2.5 million people this year, down from 3.6 million in 2025, which in turn was about half the previous year’s level.
“These are not statistics. These numbers represent lives, futures, and Nigerians,” Fall said.
He also said the UN had no choice but to focus on “the most lifesaving” interventions given the drop in available funding.
Shortfalls last year led the World Food Programme to also warn that millions could go hungry in Nigeria as its resources ran out in December and it was forced to cut support for more than 300,000 children.
Fall said Nigeria was showing growing national ownership of the crisis response in recent months through measures such as local funding for lean-season food support and early-warning action on flooding.
