ASEAN should delay Burma’s chairmanship to help ensure it moves towards democratic transition and peace

By Burma Partnership • October 17, 2011

Since it requested the ASEAN Chairmanship in 2014, Burma’s regime has engaged in a campaign designed to make the country appear ready to chair the regional bloc. However, despite these attempts to win over ASEAN member states, the changes made by the regime have been superficial and far from being sufficient.

Granting Burma the chairmanship at this point would be premature, and a waste of a unique opportunity to encourage Burma along a path to genuine democratic transition and national reconciliation.

We believe ASEAN’s decision to defer granting Burma the ASEAN chairmanship during its 2011 May Summit has had a significant influence on the regime, encouraging it to make these recent changes. Another decision to defer could have a greater positive impact both on the regime and on ASEAN as a regional institution.

In this briefer, Burma Partnership calls on ASEAN to postpone granting the 2014 chairmanship to Burma until the regime takes concrete steps to prove that they intend to carry out genuine democratic transition and national reconciliation by meeting the following necessary three benchmarks:

Immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners;
Declaration of a nationwide ceasefire with ethnic armed groups and cessation of attacks on ethnic communities; and,
Inclusive political dialogue with ethnic nationality representatives, including armed groups, and the pro-democracy movement, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD.

Download the full briefer here.