The Republic of the Union of Myanmar, as represented by the National Unity Government, welcomes the interactive dialogue on Myanmar with the High Commissioner for Human Rights as well as OHCHR’s corresponding report on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.

Myanmar thanks High Commissioner Türk for his abiding solidarity with its people.

As the High Commissioner told the Council today, the situation in Myanmar has “become untenable”. To the High Commissioner, the illegal military junta holds an “utter contempt for humanity” – sexual violence, mass killings, extrajudicial executions, beheadings, dismemberments and mutilations.

The High Commissioner’s latest report shines much needed light on the junta’s denial of humanitarian access as a continuation of the military’s long-employed “four-cuts” strategy. The report speaks of an ‘erasure of nearly a decade of progress’ since the junta’s failed coup in February 2021, with a doubling in poverty levels, rocketing food insecurity and inflation, and direct attacks on healthcare personnel and infrastructure.

To the High Commissioner, ‘security has dramatically worsened for humanitarian workers and aid providers are consistently exposed to risks of arrest, harassment or other mistreatment or even death’. The junta’s massacre of at least 168 children, women and men in Pazigyi village of Sagaing on 11 April 2023 is singled out not only for its barbarity but as an example of secondary attacks where rescuers and locals collecting dead bodies and human remains were targeted by junta aircraft.

Almost two months after Cyclone Mocha cut a path of death and destruction through vast areas of Myanmar, more than a million people in Rakhine State require life-saving aid including food, drinking water and shelter supplies.

In a murderous move that the Head of the UN in Myanmar labelled “unfathomable” and “devastating”, the illegal military junta blocked the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Rakhine by cancelling travel authorizations. This has again exposed the junta’s weaponization of aid and its sustained persecution of minorities. As with Cyclone Nargis in 2008, the military has put its own interests above the people’s survival.

Myanmar joins the High Commissioner in recognising the Rohingya as an “integral part of Myanmar’s people and the country’s future” and agrees that Rohingya returns to their homes and communities in Rakhine “must only take place with their fully informed and truly voluntary choice” and when “conditions for safe, sustainable, and dignified returns to Myanmar are in place”. Myanmar, as represented by the National Unity Government, remains committed to creating these conditions.

Furthermore, Myanmar supports the recommendations set out in the High Commissioner’s report. We accept the High Commissioner’s call on the National Unity Government to take all steps to protect the civilian population, to take all adequate measures to ensure full compliance with international law, and to investigate reports of human rights violations and abuses.

We also restate our commitment to facilitating full humanitarian access and the delivery of assistance to all people in need. Advance notification by UN entities will continue to enable the National Unity Government and its ethnic partners to support safe and expedient passage.

Finally, Myanmar fully supports the High Commissioner’s call on the Security Council to refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court, and his call on the international community to cease and prevent the supply of arms, cash and aviation fuel to the junta as well as other means enabling it to wage war on the people.

With the United Kingdom this month holding the presidency, the Security Council should formally place Myanmar on its agenda as a threat to international peace and security and adopt a follow-up resolution to 2669 (2022) that urgently addresses the junta’s compliance failures with Chapter VII measures. In the High Commissioner’s words, the Security Council must “exert maximum pressure to end this crisis”.