Open Letter: The UN General Assembly must take decisive action to hold the military junta accountable for atrocities in Myanmar
Your Excellencies,
We – 440 Myanmar, regional, and international civil society organizations – call on Member States of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to take immediate and decisive action to hold the Myanmar military accountable under international law through all possible avenues.
We welcome the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights which provided corroborated evidence of the military junta’s intensifying brutality – particularly airstrikes, the burning of villages, and mass killings. In addressing the worsening crisis in Myanmar, High Commissioner Volker Türk described the junta’s actions as “inhumanity in its vilest form,” emphasizing that there is “no reason to believe that the military will…break the cycle of impunity that has characterized its operations for decades.” It is clear that the military has continued and will continue to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes against the people of Myanmar unless it is held accountable under international law. We thus express our strongest support for the High Commissioner’s call for the UN Security Council (UNSC) to refer “the full scope of the current situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC).”
Nearly one year after its adoption in December 2022, we remain extremely disappointed by the insubstantial Security Council resolution 2669 on Myanmar. With this resolution, the Council has utterly failed to uphold its responsibilities under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and to ensure justice and accountability by failing to refer the current crisis in Myanmar to the ICC.