Written about but seldom written with

Naw May Lyar Soe is a TWG FCAS member who works at the intersection of public health, humanitarian response, and grassroots governance along the Thailand–Myanmar border. In this piece she writes about the challenges of living and working in public health in liminal spaces, where the residents are not in control of either the narrative about their lives or the consequence of such choices. Naw is co-author of Reimagining Research Ethics Through Local Knowledge and Leadership: The Community Ethics Advisory Board on the Thailand–Burma Border.

She writes this article in her personal capacity.

I have spent more than three decades along the Thailand–Myanmar border. I was born here, and I have watched this region be written about, analyzed, and framed by people who sometimes pass through in days, sometimes never at all. So when I read “Huge online scam operations are flourishing in wartorn Myanmar” published recently in The Conversation, it felt surreal to be reading it as someone who was here long before and after (!) the report was published, sitting across from many people whose lives these narratives touch.

Let me share something I used in a recent webinar hosted by the Development Studies Association of Australia on ethical research, because I think it captures what I mean. Imagine a survey that asks, "How old are you?" Harmless, right? Now imagine you are a man between 18 and 35 in Myanmar, where conscription laws mean that question is anything but neutral. Or picture a researcher asking an ethnic Karen family, "What is your ethnicity?" in an area where entire villages have been burned under accusations of supporting armed groups. These are not hypothetical cases. They are the lived texture of daily life here, and they are exactly the kind of thing that gets missed when knowledge is produced from the outside looking in.

I want to be clear: scam operations along this border absolutely need to be exposed. That is not where my concern lies. What troubles me is the framing, and what that framing sets in motion. When border areas are described primarily through the lens of crime and weak governance, the policy responses that follow tend to look the same:  more scrutiny at checkpoints, more fear, less access to the health services and safety they desperately need. And those measures almost never reach the people actually running large-scale operations, who are typically shielded by powerful networks and political connections. Who they do reach are migrants, displaced families, people seeking health care, people crossing because they have no other choice. People who fled violence or economic collapse find themselves treated as potential threats rather than human beings in need of protection.

For those of us doing humanitarian work on the ground, it changes the environment we operate in. Access to communities becomes harder. Cross-border support grows more complicated. The space to provide healthcare, protection, and basic services shrinks not because needs have decreased, but because the political climate has shifted. And we adapt, because we have to. But it takes a toll.

Navigating the aftermath of narratives

What hurts me most is that we had no role in shaping the stories told about us, about the place we call home. External actors arrive, gather what they need, and move on. We - and the frontline workers, local and international, who chose to stay alongside communities  here - are left with the consequences, navigating the aftermath of narratives we were never asked to help shape. That dynamic has repeated itself more times than I can count. It is a quiet form of harm, even when it is entirely unintentional.

Ethical research and reporting, especially in places like this, has to mean more than documenting what is wrong. It means understanding how your framing will land, who will bear its weight, and whether the people most affected had any hand in shaping it. It means staying curious enough to ask, and humble enough to listen — not just on the way in, but on the way out too.

AI-assisted editing was used for language and clarity. All content, views, and any errors are Naw’s own.