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Panel abstract:

The junta that seized control of Myanmar’s government in February 2021, triggering a massive, nationwide civil disobedience movement and prompting intensive pushback from regional ethnic armed organizations, still has yet to cede power back to civilian authorities. In the meantime, the unseated civilian leadership continues as the National Unity Government (NUG), while grassroots protest continues and ethnic-minority states exercise differing levels of local control. Myanmar’s economy has been devastated; social services, from health care to education, have been disrupted; and untold numbers have fled the country. How will Myanmar recover from this political, economic, and social upheaval once the coup government falls—as must ultimately happen? Questions previously unresolved, of federalism and minority rights, of development trajectories, and of how to maintain sovereign authority in the face of insistent neighbors, will remain, alongside fundamental challenges of rebuilding a shattered polity. This panel brings together representatives of the NUG and ethnic-minority groups to discuss their expectations, plans and hopes for Myanmar’s post-junta future.

Kyaw Moe Tun - Permanent Representative of Myanmar to the United Nations

Kyaw Moe Tun currently serves as the Permanent Representative of Myanmar to the United Nations in New York. From 2018–2020, he served as Myanmar's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva, as well as to the Conference on Disarmament, the World Trade Organization, and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, while serving concurrently, too, as Ambassador to Switzerland. Before his appointment to the UN, from 2016–2018, he served as director-general of the International Organizations and Economic Development Department under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has held posts also in Myanmar’s embassies in Jakarta and Singapore. Following the 2021 coup, he remained loyal to the civilian government and resisted the military regime’s attempt to remove him from his post.

Moe Zaw Oo - Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, National Unity Government

Moe Zaw Oo actively participated in students’ demonstrations and later nationwide uprisings in 1988 when he studied at the Rangoon Arts and Science University. Then he joined the National League for Democracy led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in September 1988. He was arrested in 1990 for his involvement in political activities and released in 1999. He received a master’s degree after studying at the Chulalongkorn University in Thailand while he was in exile. Upon return to Myanmar in 2012, he served as a deputy Chief of Staff to the office of the NLD Chairperson – Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and then became the Chief of Staff of the office in February 2016. He received a degree from a post-graduate course in international strategic studies at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London in 2017. He served as an advisor to the Union Peace Commission until the attempted coup in February 2021. He is an Executive Director of the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation – a charity organization chaired by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. He was appointed by the CRPH and the National Unity Consultative Council as a deputy minister for the Foreign Affairs of the National Unity Government of Myanmar in April 2021.

Aung Kyaw Moe - Deputy Minister of Human Rights, National Unity Government

Aung Kyaw Moe is Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Human Rights of the National Unity Government and is a prominent Rohingya human rights activist and humanitarian. He has been awarded various international awards, including the 2019 Schuman Award by the EU, the French Republic Human Rights Prize by the French Government, and a global pluralism award. Aung Kyaw Moe has worked with diverse international organizations for over 15 years in Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Liberia. He has a Master’s Degree in Humanitarian Assistance from Deakin University, Australia. He is a Bush Liberty and Leadership Fellow at the Bush Presidential Center and completed both an Asia Pacific Leaders Fellowship at the Obama Presidential Center and a Dalai Lama fellowship at the United States Institute for Peace.

Evelyn - Member of Parliament, Karenni State Democratic Party

Evelyn is an elected Member of Parliament for the Karenni State Democratic Party, having won her seat in the 2020 general election for the Karenni State Assembly. She is a member of the Karenni State Interim Parliament. She was a member of the National Consultative Council and a Karenni State Consultative Council (KSCC) representative. She was elected vice-chairperson of the KSCC after the first congress of the KSCC in January 2023.

Moderator: Meredith Weiss

Professor of Political Science, University at Albany, SUNY

Director, SUNY/CUNY SEAC