Webinar: Envisioning a Future Myanmar

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.