The laws of war and Myanmar’s conflicts

Myanmar’s dictatorship never fails to take crude advantage of a high-level international visit. So it was when the military regime’s chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing met for the first time with the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, in September 2024. 

The headline in the junta-controlled newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar was classic authoritarian absurdism: “Tatmadaw upholds Geneva Convention with comprehensive measures,” it read, referring to the military by the Burmese name for “armed forces.” This was another in a long series of examples of abusive regimes, especially officially recognised states, using International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as a shield.