Activists Welcome Review of Myanmar’s Membership in Regional Human Rights Umbrella
Activists from Myanmar and beyond have welcomed the decision by a regional human rights umbrella group to review the membership of Myanmar’s military regime.
The South East Asia National Human Rights Institution Forum (SEANF) said on Sept. 25 it is reviewing the membership eligibility of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC), which is controlled by the country’s putschist regime.
The six-member body, which is currently chaired by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, is urgently looking at the question whether the MNHRC is qualified to assume the rotating chair next year.
Established in 2007, SEANF now comprises six national human rights commissions aiming to strengthen regional cooperation, from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Timor-Leste—and Myanmar.
The decision to review Myanmar’s membership was welcomed by several groupings of human rights and civil society groups, which said in a statement on Sept. 29 it was “an important step toward safeguarding the credibility and integrity of the SEANF.”
They are the Asian NGO Network on National Human Rights Institutions (ANNI), the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Forum-Asia), and the CSO Working Group on Independent National Human Rights Institutions.
ANNI and Forum-Asia have 28 and 86 member groups respectively from around 20 countries across Asia. The CSO Working Group on NHRI comprises 21 civil society groups in Myanmar.
They pointed out that the regime-controlled MNHRC has failed an independent institution to hold the military responsible for its crimes since the 2021 or to protect civilians amid the regime’s “widespread and systematic human rights violations.”
Instead, it has been used as a “shield against scrutiny”, lending the regime a veneer of human rights oversight, they added.
“The MNHRC is only to serve the regime, not to promote and protect human rights,” Kham Mai of the Women’s League of Burma told the Irrawaddy. “In fact, people who report violations to the commission face a risk to their own safety.”
Officially established in 2011 under Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government, the MNHRC was at one time recognized by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) as “partially independent.” Later there were institutional reforms under the National League for Democracy (NLD) administration.
But with the 2021 coup, the commission leadership was replaced by military loyalists, and it has since raised no objections of any kind to regime atrocities that killed thousands of civilians, including airstrikes and massacres and other human rights violations.
The direct murders of 8,500 civilians at the hands of the regime and arrest of some 32,000 have been documented by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, with tens of thousands more killed in the ongoing civil war.
In 2025, the regime’s human rights commission was also expelled from the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) and the Asia-Pacific Forum (AFP).
SEANF said it would consider a resolution on the status of the MNHRC at a board meeting last Thursday after the national body submitted a report and other relevant materials. But the MNHRC refused, claiming the network did not comply with procedural rules. It is not known whether SEANF came to a decision regardless.
“We appreciate this principled step taken by the SEANF members,” said Khin Ohmar of Progressive Voice, a member of the Working Group and Forum-Asia. “But this formal review must lead to the immediate removal of the MNHRC from SEANF.”
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