U Kyaw Moe Tun must remain Myanmar’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations

By Khin Ohmar

10 September 2026

This week in New York, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is gathered for the start of its 81st session.

I am here with another woman human rights defender from the Karen Women’s Organisation and the Women’s League of Burma, meeting with members of the UNGA. We are here to share firsthand accounts of the situation on the ground in Myanmar, make recommendations to address the deepening humanitarian crisis, and seek support for Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun’s credentials.

Backed by a groundswell of support both at home and abroad, Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun has legitimately and rightfully represented Myanmar and its people at the United Nations for the past five years.

The UNGA has now appointed the nine members of this year’s Credentials Committee. It consists of six new members—Bahamas, Belgium, Benin, Jamaica, Uganda, Vanuatu—alongside three permanent members: China, Russia, and the United States. Even before these members were announced, the people of Myanmar were calling on the Credentials Committee to retain Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun as Myanmar’s Permanent Representative to the UN. Reaffirming their unwavering support, the people of Myanmar are mobilizing campaigns once again ahead of the 81st Session of the UNGA, urging the UN to retain him. In July, 191 civil society organizations sent an open letter to the UNGA calling for this action. Additionally, a petition urging the UN Credentials Committee to uphold this established practice was launched in August.

Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun was appointed in October 2020 by Myanmar’s democratically elected government, which the military has violently and illegally attempted to overthrow since February 2021. On 26 February 2021, just weeks after the coup attempt, he stood before the General Assembly and appealed to the international community to take the “strongest possible action” against the illegitimate military junta.

Watching his impassioned address live on my computer screen—as he openly rejected the military’s coup attempt and raised the three-finger salute of resistance—I was in utter shock, unable to believe my own eyes. Throughout my three decades of advocacy and engagement with various United Nations bodies, I had only ever encountered Myanmar ambassadors who fiercely defended the military. Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun’s defiance was a profound shock not only to me but to the entire people of Myanmar, filling us all overwhelming pride and joy. Predictably, the illegal junta announced his dismissal the following day, but the UN stood firm on principle and did not hand his seat to the generals.

Year after year, the Credentials Committee has deferred its decision on Myanmar’s representation, allowing Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun to remain at the UN. During the 80th session, the Committee once again received competing communications from the junta, yet chose to retain his credentials.

The junta’s desperate attempts to manufacture legitimacy

The junta has spent the past five years trying to manufacture an appearance of legitimacy it cannot earn—and will never earn—from the people of Myanmar. This strategy culminated in its recent sham election.

During this farce, an estimated 10.5 million eligible voters were excluded, while millions more chose to boycott it. Where voting did occur, people faced threats, military surveillance, and physical coercion. Meanwhile, the junta launched airstrikes that killed 170 civilians and arbitrarily detained over 400 people.

Following this charade, Min Aung Hlaing declared himself “president.”

This was never a serious attempt to play-act a democratic process. Instead, it was a superficial effort to deceive the international community and cloak military rule in civilian disguise. Nothing more.

Will the Credentials Committee—and by extension, the UN—allow this illegitimate junta to achieve through a sham election the legitimacy it failed to secure through a violent and inhumane coup attempt? It must not.

The junta’s violence continues unchecked

Since its illegal coup attempt, the junta has launched more than 14,000 aerial attacks and carried out at least 577 documented massacres. Last month alone, it conducted 530 aerial bombardments, killing 139 people.

On 21 August, a fighter jet dropped four bombs on a Buddhist monastery during a meditation retreat, killing at least 14 people and injuring over 20. The following day, military warplanes dropped approximately 100 bombs on the town of Ngapali in Rakhine State, killing one person and injuring 14 others. On 25 August, another 10 bombs struck a school in Chin State, killing five people—including two children—and injuring nearly 20.

In total, these August airstrikes killed 88 people, injured over 150, and damaged 15 public buildings, including 10 religious sites and three schools. On 22 August 2026, the National League for Democracy (NLD) confirmed the extrajudicial killing of 133 party members, including eight lawmakers, by the military junta. Approximately 2,900 NLD members, including party chairperson Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, remain arbitrarily detained under life-threatening conditions, alongside more than 19,000 other political prisoners.

This is the reality behind the junta’s civilian façade. The junta is not a government exercising legitimate authority—or any authority. It is an illegal, criminal entity waging a campaign of terror against a population that refuses to accept tyrannical rule.

The junta has no authority over the Myanmar state

The junta lacks both a democratic mandate and the nationwide authority it claims.

Across vast regions of Myanmar, democratic resistance forces and emerging federal governance institutions already govern independently of Naypyidaw. Despite ongoing military attacks, these interim bodies manage and deliver public health, education, emergency logistics, and humanitarian services, in close collaboration with civil society.

Myanmar is undergoing a profound political transformation; its youth, human rights defenders, civil society, ethnic resistance organizations, and people’s defense forces are actively building a federal democracy from the ground up while defying the military’s extraordinary violence.

The Credentials Committee must recognize this reality and uphold the democratic representation of the people of Myanmar.

The junta’s campaign for diplomatic recognition intensifies

Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun’s seat matters because UN representation is more than just the name on a country’s placard. It determines whom the international community recognizes as the legitimate representative of the Myanmar state and its people.

Since the military’s illegal coup attempt, Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun has championed the democratic aspirations of Myanmar’s population at the UN by using his mandate to call for international accountability, support for a federal democratic future, and an immediate end to military violence.

Obviously, the junta wants this powerful global platform for itself.

Its campaign for diplomatic recognition has grown increasingly aggressive. In recent months, the junta has sought high-level engagement with governments including Russia, China, and Belarus while attempting to gain a foothold within the United Nations. Although the UN appears to have quietly but firmly resisted these efforts so far, they remain part of a calculated diplomatic offensive.

A vacant seat is not a neutral compromise

Some may view the decision to block a junta representative while simultaneously removing Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun as a neutral compromise. Let us make no mistake: it is not.

Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun is the democratic representative of the state and people of Myanmar. For five years, his continued presence at the UN has stood as a testament to the moral integrity of Myanmar’s people as they continue to defend their democracy and human dignity, striving for genuine peace in the face of the military’s inhumane violence and campaign of terror.

Any signal that could be perceived as weakening Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun’s position would send a highly dangerous message: that a military with a decades-long track record of grave human rights violations can violently oppress the people for five years, stage a sham election, and ultimately receive international recognition that whitewashes its crimes.

Rewarding a junta that has imprisoned, tortured, and murdered democratically elected representatives—while committing nationwide war crimes and crimes against humanity—would set a precedent that reverberates far beyond Myanmar.

The military junta was illegitimate in 2021, and it remains illegitimate today

The case before this year’s Credentials Committee is no more complicated than it was in 2021.

Min Aung Hlaing did not receive a democratic mandate for his violent coup attempt, nor did he earn one through a five-year campaign of extraordinary violence. He certainly did not acquire one by staging a sham election designed to preserve military power.

The UN must stand by its own findings

At its 61st regular session in March 2026, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a consensus resolution Myanmar that explicitly condemned the military junta’s staged electoral process. The resolution described the sham election as a manufactured attempt by the military to legitimize its illegal February 2021 coup attempt and mask ongoing oppression behind a façade of civilian governance.

Furthermore, the Human Rights Council highlighted airstrikes on civilians, mass arbitrary arrests, political imprisonment, and the criminalization of public criticism of this farcical process. During its 81st Session, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) must now recognize and reaffirm these findings and recommendations from its principal human rights body.

Every member of the Credentials Committee must unequivocally uphold Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun’s representation of Myanmar at the UN.

The people of Myanmar have made their collective voice clear: they stand in full support of Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun and demand that the UN retain him as their rightful representative.

The UN must not allow a brutal, criminal junta to buy legitimacy through force and fraud. Instead, it must honor the will of the people.

Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun must keep his seat.

Khin Ohmar is a Myanmar human rights activist who was involved in organizing the ‘8888’ nationwide pro-democracy uprising. She is also the founder and chairperson of Progressive Voice, a Myanmar human rights organization. She developed the Women Peacebuilding Program for Women’s League of Burma and served as program coordinator from 2000 to 2006.