A day in the life of Mark H?ussermann, co-head of Humanitarian Aid in Yangon, Myanmar

The embassy has been on a state of alert ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started, and this has been heightened after the military coup on 1 February 2021. I have not left Yangon – the largest city in the country where our office is located – for the last year and a half apart from a brief visit to Thailand and Switzerland. The people in Myanmar are facing extreme hardship. I lead humanitarian direct actions and despite the ongoing attacks and violence in the entire country, we have so far managed to find alternative ways to continue providing aid to over 177,000 internally displaced persons in the south-eastern part of the country with the help of our local partners. Many of my local staff have friends and relatives who were threatened or arrested after the military coup. We are currently trying our best to protect them and our partners.

I grew up in Japan and Singapore, where my father worked in sales for Bühler milling machines. In 1999 and in 2004, I travelled to Myanmar and was instantly fascinated by the people and their culture. In 2013, I returned with the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit (SHA). The country had just started opening up at the time. I started working in Mawlamyine, a small city in south-eastern Myanmar and headed a field office there. We provided humanitarian aid in very remote and poor regions, which are mainly inhabited by the Mon and Karen ethnic minorities. They are extremely mistrustful of the military, the government and strangers in general. Their rights were denied for decades and they were not allowed to learn their language or practise their culture. So we first needed to build trust, which meant drinking lots of tea, sharing meals and simply listening. I like this kind of grassroots work with the communities. It takes a lot of time but during the current crisis I am benefitting from the trust we established then.

I studied architecture as well as real estate management. Often, it was by building social infrastructure, especially schools, that we were able to get a foot in the door and establish long-term cooperation with the communities. We always closely involved the village communities in planning and construction. We were thus in a position to support them later in other areas, such as education, health, gender equality or combating gender-based violence. Since 2018, our activities have continued under the new Swiss cooperation programme in Shan State. Various ethnic and armed groups have signed a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the government here. Our objective is to facilitate confidence-building between the various parties and create a foundation for long-term cooperation in the areas of health, education and market development.

What I am currently missing most is nature and opportunities to travel in this beautiful country. At least I am able to meet up with Australian and Burmese friends once a week to cycle along the Kandawgyi Lake. We start at 6am in the morning, which is safest because the road blocks are still unmanned at that time. We generally end up in one of the few 'tea shops' that are still open, where we eat a mohinga, a spicy noodle soup with fish, or Indian bread and drink black tea with condensed milk – a brief moment of normality in this continuing state of emergency.

Social infrastructure for ethnic minorities

Since 2013, over 170 social infrastructure projects – including primary schools, health centres and water supply facilities – have been built under the humanitarian aid programme in 92 remote villages affected by conflict in the Kayin and Mon provinces. Repairs and renovation were simultaneously carried out on existing infrastructure. Almost 70% of small construction projects could be implemented by the communities themselves after receiving training from SDC staff or partners. Ever since the military coup in February 2021, schools in areas controlled by ethnic minorities are much sought after because many parents and teachers are boycotting the military junta government.

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