Myanmar Pressed to Push Rights Reforms Foward

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has congratulated Myanmar for its November 2015 elections and acknowledged the country’s progress on human rights in a report by its Special Rapporteur on Myanmar. However, the March 2016 report also issues a list of reform priorities for the inaugural National League for Democracy (NLD) government.

It identifies continuing problems with the rule of law, democratic processes, human rights, armed conflict, and economic and social development.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has congratulated Myanmar for its November 2015 elections and acknowledged the country’s progress on human rights in a report by its Special Rapporteur on Myanmar. However, the March 2016 report also issues a list of reform priorities for the inaugural National League for Democracy (NLD) government.

It identifies continuing problems with the rule of law, democratic processes, human rights, armed conflict, and economic and social development.

The report calls upon the new NLD government to pursue a ‘100 Days’ program of reform, evoking the appellation given to former US president Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression. The report also itemises a slate of recommendations, including a list of specific provisions in individual legislation that violate human rights and should be reformed.

However, aspirations for a more aggressive human rights agenda under the NLD should be tempered by recognition of the pressures facing the party. These pressures come from the array of demands placed on the NLD by differing groups in Myanmar’s society, the military and the global community.

The NLD has a broad mandate to pursue reform, given it won 80 percent of available seats in parliament in the election. Yet the party faces a pluralist Myanmar society that is riven by ethnic and religious tensions. This includes the peoples of the country’s frontiers who seek varying degrees of recognition and autonomy as well as Buddhist factions pushing extremist agendas.

Given the country’s history of conflict, such tensions pose a serious challenge to the fledgling political system’s ability to achieve peaceful resolutions while still meeting popular expectations for political, economic and social development. There may be a consensus for change but different constituencies interpret the meaning of change differently.

Added to this is an array of other states, international institutions, non-governmental organisations and corporations who hold leverage in the form of development aid and foreign investment. Myanmar’s geographic location, natural resources and largely untapped labour market hold special interest for outside actors, including global powers such as India, China, the European Union and the United States. These are entities with different interests for the country’s future and the NLD will need to balance their demands.

Lurking behind all this is Myanmar’s military. The military has retained 25 percent of the seats in both chambers of parliament. As the constitution requires 75 percent parliamentary approval for a constitutional amendment, this assures the military will maintain control over their own future in the country’s government. The Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces maintains authority over the ministries of Defence, Border Affairs and Home Affairs, and thus has control over the country’s military, police and civil service.

The Commander-in-Chief also has the power to declare states of emergency and assume executive, legislative and judicial powers. This leaves open the possibility of a scenario in which the Commander-in-Chief — should he become dissatisfied with the government — could order the police and civil service to ignore government directives. This would spur a constitutional crisis sufficient to give the military pretext to declare a state of emergency and resume military control. Such possibilities allowed by the constitution leave the NLD government subject to a persistent, coercive military presence.

For now, the NLD government seems to be exercising constructive relationships with these diverse actors. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the NLD, enjoys the apparent mandate of Myanmar’s voting population, the sympathies of an international community and open communications with the military. Such status, though, is tied to legitimacy derived in a large part from her international reputation and her party’s broad victory in the 2015 election.

The political capital provided by both in the post-2015 election period will invariably erode as the NLD works to advance its agenda through the complex array of interests surrounding it.

Even if the NLD government holds a sincere interest in meeting the Special Rapporteur’s calls, it will have to subsume the topic of human rights within a panoply of other demands. The NLD will have to calibrate its work on human rights against the priorities of Myanmar’s voters, foreign actors and the country’s military.

During this volatile period of transition, it is likely that progress in human rights will be incremental, as the NLD will have to explore means to promote reform in ways amenable to interests that are neither convergent nor consistent. Despite the aspirations of the Special Rapporteur’s Report, human rights in Myanmar will continue to be a long-term project.

Rights reform in Myanmar must face reality is republished with permission from East Asia Forum