Myanmar holds one of the world’s longest ongoing civil wars since its independence in 1948. Before the 2021 Myanmar coup d’état, there were about 505,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Myanmar due to armed conflict and natural disasters as of December 2020.

2020 was a challenging year for IDPs, with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic adding to the difficulties they already faced, and millions being newly displaced by conflicts, disasters, development projects, evictions and more.

Ethical approaches to conducting research in fragile contexts, particularly with participants deemed vulnerable, such as refugees and IDPs, are always a major concern. The current COVID-19 crisis has highlighted how critical it is to have a thoughtful, considered, and respectful understanding of Western do-not-harm principles and priorities when conducting research.

Fleeing to save your life. Abandoning the existence you have built and everything you have known, simply to stay alive. Seeking a new place to call home or, perhaps, keeping the keys to the home you are leaving behind, with the unspoken hope of returning there one day.

By the end of 2019, 79.5 million people were forcibly displaced either within their own country, as internally displaced persons (IDPs), or having crossed an international border as refugees and asylum seekers.

As a theatre practitioner who has worked in over a dozen countries across four continents in diverse creative and community contexts, my mode of engagement in the narrative on internal displacement is using drama as a tool for creating positive and safe space in the discussion on internal displacement.