Myanmar/Burma Country Focus Report

Reporting Period Covered: June 2025 to June 2026

Between June 2025 and June 2026, the political landscape in Burma/Myanmar was defined by the sham election, coup leader Sen. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing assuming the presidency, and the convening of the sham parliament. To project a facade of legitimacy, the junta orchestrated a three-phase “sham election” between December 2025 and January 2026. The process was fundamentally coercive: legitimate political opposition was banned, the 2020 election archives were burned, and the junta criminalised non-participation by weaponising a new Election Protection Law, charging over 400 people by early 2026 and handing down sentences of up to 49 years to three youth activists for simply criticising the polls. This violence culminated in April 2026 when the military-installed, pro-regime parliament elected Min Aung Hlaing  “President”, who then handed military command to Gen. Ye Win Oo, his loyalist and architect of the junta’s torture centres. The resulting parliament and cabinet are dominated by sanctioned military figures, completely erasing state transparency, democratic participation, and accountability.

The physical environment for civil society has been rendered exceptionally hostile through mass violence and draconian legislation. Attempting to crush nationwide resistance, the junta continued martial law in 60 townships and launched devastating airstrikes. Since the military coup five years ago, an independent conflict monitor, ACLED, reported that there have been 100,114 conflict-related fatalities, making the half-decade civil war Asia’s deadliest active conflict. The junta dramatically escalated its war on the civilian population. The junta has adjusted its tactics to deploy specialised groups of two to five jet fighters to execute sustained, highly lethal airstrikes against single targets, resulting in extensive damage to civilian infrastructure. By April 2026, the junta had bombed 251 schools, killing around 300 students and teachers.  The junta has burnt down over 125,000 civilian homes since the 2021 coup.

Freedom of movement and association were severely paralysed by a massive forced conscription campaign that abducted approximately 96,000 men by February 2026. Apart from male conscripts, women aged 18-27 were also specifically targeted for forced conscription. In addition to these abductions, the junta and junta-aligned militia extorted monthly fees from households to fund the military.

The junta also constructed a heavily surveilled digital environment. Utilising Chinese and Russian tech, the junta rolled out a localised “Great Firewall” to monitor 33.4 million users and deployed biometric tracking and facial recognition (PSMS) for 50,000 targeted individuals at checkpoints around Burma/Myanmar. The junta routinely weaponised localised internet blackouts to obscure its war crimes; between January and March 2026, nearly 96% of the junta's airstrikes (406 out of 423) occurred under localised internet blackouts.

The violence and persecution disproportionately impacted marginalised groups, forcing people to use lethal means of escape. Tragically, in April 2026, a boat carrying 280 Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees capsized, leaving only 9 survivors. More than 3.9 million people are internally displaced within Burma/Myanmar, and 12.4 million individuals face acute food insecurity. Civil society also faced severe resource starvation driven by US funding cuts under the Trump administration, shifted Swedish development priorities, and WFP funding cuts. 

Despite the fully disabling environment created by the junta, democratic forces and civil society demonstrated immense resilience. Recognising the total failure of the junta, 19 resistance groups united to form the Spring Revolution Alliance (SRA) in late 2025, while the National Unity Government (NUG) reformed its administrative structures. In resistance-controlled areas in central Burma, entities like Magway and Sagaing Federal Units formally approved civilian-led interim governments, actively working to build accountable and responsive state alternatives from the ground up amid the ongoing conflict. In a major political breakthrough, the pro-democracy movement and ethnic forces successfully consolidated a collective leadership structure. On 30 March 2026, the NUG, the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), and major ethnic resistance organisations, such as the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), the Karen National Union (KNU), the Karenni, and the Chin National Front (CNF), established the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF). 

A fundamental tension in contemporary Burma/Myanmar following the 2021 failed coup is that territories are being governed by diverse political entities, mainly divided between the military junta and resistance forces. On one side, diverse resistance forces are characterised by socio-ethnic and political factors. On the other side, these factors are also apparent amongst some forces aligned with the junta. The tensions that arise from such complexity inform every aspect of civil society functioning, as will become evident in the following discussion of the principles for an enabling environment. 

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   This report uses the names 'Myanmar' and 'Burma' interchangeably. 'Myanmar' is used in alignment with constitutional and international standards, while 'Burma' reflects the preference of civil society groups involved in the report’s production, who use the term as a form of resistance to the junta’s claimed legitimacy amid heinous human rights violations.