Myanmar · People
Operating in Crisis
Not For Sale’s people work in Myanmar launched in 2025 as a program country. Myanmar is in the grip of compounding crises: civil war since the 2021 military coup, unregulated rare earth and gold mining in rebel-controlled territories, and the rapid expansion of cyber-scam compounds where trafficked people from across Southeast Asia are forced to run online fraud operations at industrial scale.
What We Found
Myanmar’s lawless mining zones, particularly in Shan and Kachin states, mix armed groups, informal labor, and smuggling in conditions that produce debt bondage and sexual exploitation. Toxic rare earth mining is poisoning rivers that flow into Thailand, contaminating the Kok River and threatening farming, fishing, and tourism communities across the border. Ecocide and trafficking operate as a single system here: environmental destruction displaces communities into the same labor markets where traffickers recruit.
Meanwhile, cyber-scam slavery compounds, where victims are imprisoned and forced to conduct online fraud under armed guard, have become one of the fastest-growing forms of modern-day slavery in the world. Myanmar’s border zones with Thailand and China are among the largest operating centers.
Not For Sale’s presence in Myanmar connects directly to the Thailand program, where many of the children at Baan Kru Nam originate from Myanmar, making the two programs two parts of the same corridor.
What We Are Building
Not For Sale is establishing survivor support, community awareness, and safe economic alternatives in communities targeted by traffickers along the Myanmar-Thailand corridor. Impact figures are being gathered as the programme takes shape.
