Resistance, Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Future of Myanmar

Co-sponsors:
Southeast Asia Program, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and the
Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL)
in the
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI)
Stanford University

Discussants:
Larry Diamond, Mosbacher Senior Fellow of Global Democracy, FSI
Scot Marciel, Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow, APARC 

Chair: Donald K. Emmerson, Director, Southeast Asia Program, APARC

Optimism marked the New Year’s Day statement released on 1 January 2024 by Myanmar’s opposition-in-exile — the National Unity Government (NUG) and the advisory National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC). The “daily expansion” of territory controlled by inter-ethnic “revolutionary forces” and the “steady shrinking of military-controlled areas” were attributed to the “key success” of the Burmese people’s “defensive war.” Reportedly, as of December 2023, the junta’s forces may have ceded more than 180 outposts and strongpoints in the country to trans-ethnic rebel militias bent on overthrowing the regime. Meanwhile, NUG is working internationally to gain recognition and support while trying to persuade the junta’s foreign backers to desist. Leading those and related efforts is NUG’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Daw Zin Mar Aung. In this webinar, she will address the challenges met, the progress achieved, and the chances of undercutting and overthrowing Myanmar’s brutal dictatorship for the benefit of the country’s long-suffering people.

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Daw Zin Mar Aung, in addition to her service as NUG’s foreign minister, is a member of the committee that represents Myanmar’s elected parliament as it was before its dispersal by the military junta that seized power on 1 February 2021. In democratic contests prior to the termination of democracy, she was twice elected to parliament. Honors she has received include nomination by the World Economic Forum as a World Global Leader (2014) and selection as a CDDRL Draper Hills Summer Fellow at Stanford (2013). She received an International Women of Courage Award from the US State Department in 2012 after having spent eleven years in Burmese prisons for her activism on behalf of democracy and human rights. She is also a co-founder of the Yangon School of Political Science.