Press Release for Immediate Publication
London, 28 June 2022: The Human Rights Minister of Myanmar’s National Unity Government, Aung Myo Min, has demanded NUG representation at all United Nations bodies and has denounced the UN Human Rights Council decision to leave Myanmar’s seat empty.
Speaking on the side lines of a webinar co-hosted by the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and the Myanmar Accountability Project, MAP, Minister Myo called on the UN Secretariat in New York to give clear guidance on the status of Myanmar’s representation on UN bodies. He urged the General Assembly to adopt a resolution supporting Myanmar’s democratic government as the representative of the state across the UN system, as the legitimate representative of the people. And he endorsed a proposal that the General Assembly (GA) should give to the NUG Ambassador “all the rights and privileges enjoyed by other Member States whose credentials have been accepted.”
“This would resolve the absurd inconsistencies at the United Nations, where the illegal junta is represented in some bodies, despite the General Assembly, the parent body, having voted to leave the NUG Ambassador in Myanmar’s seat,” said Myo. “I am particularly concerned that the Human Rights Council has decided to leave our seat vacant. As a result, Myanmar’s Universal Periodic Review, which makes key recommendations on protection, will not be completed, at a time when the country is facing one of its gravest human rights crises since independence.”
According to conservative estimates, over two thousand people have been killed since the illegal coup in February last year with thousands more arbitrarily detained. The UN recently reported that over a million people have now been displaced, tens of thousands of them into neighbouring states. And as Minister Myo told the webinar, the junta has burned down over 22,000 buildings including homes and religious buildings.
According to MAP Director Chris Gunness, the inconsistencies relating to Myanmar’s UN representation reinforce mixed signals from the Security Council, which the junta clearly sees as weakness and a green light to act with impunity. There has been an appalling lack of humanitarian leadership, from the Secretary-General down to the UN country team. In this vacuum, loss of life has reached an industrial scale. The people of Myanmar feel completely abandoned by the UN across the board and have lost trust in the entire system.”
The General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in June last year to condemn the coup and demanded respect for the democratic will of the people. The junta has ignored this and instead has conducted what UN experts have called “a brute force terror campaign against its own people”. Meanwhile, the NUG has engaged openly with the international community and the UN, committing itself to democratic values and human rights norms and standards.
“As it has done before in other crises, the General Assembly urgently needs to pass a resolution clarifying that the NUG is the democratically legitimate government of Myanmar that should represent the state in all UN bodies,” said Gunness. “The people of Myanmar have been waiting too long for action by the UN to address their plight and this would send an important message that the world cares.”
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Myanmar Accountability Project
Law In Action