October 17, 2025
We are writing on behalf of Human Rights Watch in the context of the upcoming summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the East Asia Summit, and associated ASEAN partner summits, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on October 26-28, 2025. During your meetings, we urge you to focus attention on the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and the plight of 3.5 million people who have been displaced by conflict and human rights abuses since the February 2021 military coup.
Human Rights Watch is an independent, nongovernmental organization that reports on and advocates for human rights in over 100 countries around the world. We have promoted respect for international human rights and humanitarian law in Myanmar for more than three decades.
In the past year, Myanmar’s military junta has responded to sustained armed resistance to its coup by intensifying its repression against pro-democracy forces and increasingly attacking civilians and civilian objects during military operations. Expanded airstrikes and artillery attacks have hit residential areas, schools, displacement camps, and medical centers. Civilians continue to live in fear of military attacks as well as arbitrary arrest, abusive conscription, and torture.
This year the junta began preparing for supposed elections that it has scheduled to start this late December. In preparation, the junta in July lifted its state of emergency but intensified its crackdown on political opposition and peaceful dissent, and issued a new law that bans protests or criticism of the election, with punishments that include the death penalty.
We urge you to address Myanmar’s dire situation and more effectively promote the rights of Myanmar’s people, including those who have fled to neighboring countries. We propose the following key actions to protect people from further abuses.
Deny support for the Myanmar junta’s sham elections
The junta’s plans to hold elections starting in late December 2025 are entirely untenable. For years Myanmar’s military has committed widespread atrocities, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, and has neither the credibility nor capacity to organize democratic elections. Widespread repression, including the arbitrary detention of opposition politicians and the dissolution and criminalization of their political parties, has created a climate of fear in which no genuine election can take place, let alone one that will be free or fair. On July 30, the junta issued a strict law that criminalizes criticism of the election by prohibiting any acts of speaking, organizing, or protesting that “disrupt[s] any part of the electoral process.”
Large parts of the country are not controlled by the military, as junta leader Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing himself acknowledged this month. The junta’s so-called nationwide census last year, carried out ostensibly to compile voter lists, reportedly ended up being used as a counterinsurgency tool to root out opposition activists and conscript military recruits. Officials later said it had only managed to conduct the census in 145 out of 330 townships, less than half the townships in the country.
Junta authorities have since stated they will hold voting in over 270 townships, first on December 28 in 102 townships mostly under military control, then on an unspecified date in January in another 172 townships, primarily where the military has either limited or no control. On August 1, the junta declared martial law in over 60 townships largely where the military has no control, and in which voting seems unlikely to be held.
In recent months, the military has stepped up offensives across the country, which have included attacks on civilians and civilian objects, as the junta attempts to gain more territory ahead of the election.
Senior United Nations officials, international election monitoring groups and several foreign governments have issued warnings about the planned elections. On September 30 before the UN General Assembly, Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, stated that “conditions do not exist for free and representative elections.” At the same meeting, the UN secretary-general’s special envoy for Myanmar, Julie Bishop, said that holding polls could inflame tensions: “There is a significant risk that the election planned for December, under current circumstances, will increase resistance, protest and violence and further undermine the fragile state of the country.”
On October 9, during a visit to Myanmar, ASEAN Foreign Minister Mohamad bin Haji Hasan outlined minimum benchmarks for elections and the need for “free, fair, transparent, and credible processes,” issuing a statement that the polls “should be held throughout the country with the participation of all political parties and stakeholders”—conditions which clearly do not exist in Myanmar.[1]
Noting his remarks, several former ASEAN foreign ministers issued a joint statement on October 11 calling on ASEAN to “unequivocally reject” the planned “sham election” and launch a “complete strategic reset on Myanmar.”[2]
ASEAN and ASEAN partners should categorically reject the idea that free and fair elections can currently be held in Myanmar and deny support for the elections. Governments should also signal that if elections are held, any supposed results will not be considered credible.
Amplify the voices of Myanmar’s people
In line with its stated commitment to “Myanmar-owned and -led peaceful and durable solutions,” ASEAN should focus its efforts on listening to and amplifying the voices of the people of Myanmar.
Several ASEAN chairs have conducted dialogue with a diverse set of Myanmar stakeholders in recent years, including representatives of ethnic groups and the opposition National Unity Government. However, several ASEAN member states and governments in the region have also hosted or met with Min Aung Hlaing in the past year, including the leaders of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. These misguided high-level engagements undermine ASEAN’s common position, which include blocking political representatives of Myanmar’s junta at high-level meetings.
Rather than increasing engagement with the junta, ASEAN and other governments should consider measures to address what it has itself called the “substantially inadequate progress in the implementation of the 5PC [Five Point Consensus],” an agreement on Myanmar that the bloc agreed to in April 2021, which Myanmar has almost entirely ignored since.
ASEAN and its partners should discuss tangible, timebound consequences for the junta’s disregard of the Five-Point Consensus and its continuing violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Governments should acknowledge the need for all ASEAN governments, and other neighboring countries like China and India, to adopt a stronger position with the junta, including by cutting access to foreign funding and military weapons and materiel. Increased pressure will help deter the military from committing abuses and facilitate better humanitarian access.
Support refugees, internally displaced persons, and humanitarian needs
The situation for people fleeing junta abuses is dire, whether they are inside or outside Myanmar. We urge you to discuss this year’s cuts by the US government to foreign assistance and reductions in assistance by several other key donors, which have exacerbated severe gaps in humanitarian aid and dramatically diminished support to people in Myanmar as well as refugees who have fled the country.
Most of the more than 3.5 million people internally displaced within Myanmar live in makeshift shelters and open fields with limited access to food, water, and health care. Aid cuts, skyrocketing prices, and lack of access to medical care has exacerbated malnutrition, waterborne illness, and preventable deaths. Over 15 million people are facing acute food insecurity, while aid agencies recently reported that more than 100,000 children in Myanmar’s Rakhine State are suffering from acute malnutrition. As of September, the UN’s humanitarian needs and response plan was only 12 percent funded.
Since the 2021 coup, many people from Myanmar have fled to neighboring countries, joining millions of Myanmar migrants, previously displaced refugees, and asylum seekers already living abroad. Over four million people from Myanmar are now in Thailand, nearly half of whom are undocumented. Many face constant threats of harassment, arrest, and deportation. Refugees from Myanmar in Malaysia – who number almost 180,000, largely Rohingya – likewise face harassment and arrest.
ASEAN and other governments attending the summits should discuss the need for increases in foreign assistance by all donor governments and new ideas for durable solutions for refugees from Myanmar, particularly Rohingya refugees, including obtaining new pledges for resettlement and funding for host countries.
Governments should also acknowledge the serious threats refugees from Myanmar face should they return to the country. Conditions for safe returns of refugees do not currently exist, particularly amid escalating conflict and abuses. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has repeatedly said that there should be no forced returns to Myanmar: “People fleeing Myanmar must be allowed access to territory to seek asylum and be protected against refoulement.” Governments should also commit to considering progressively integrating those refugees with no prospects for resettlement or repatriation.
ASEAN and partner governments should affirm their obligation not to forcibly return refugees to Myanmar.
Rohingya and other asylum seekers intercepted in countries’ territorial waters should not be forced out to sea but rather allowed to seek asylum or transit to third countries.
Countries hosting refugees should allow them to seek residency and permission to work.
A recent positive development was the government of Thailand’s new rules to allow many registered refugees from Myanmar the right to work. We urge Malaysia and other countries hosting refugees from Myanmar to do the same. Refugees should be allowed to seek work opportunities to help support themselves and their families.
ASEAN and partner governments should also commit to more aid for refugees and for humanitarian needs inside of Myanmar, particularly to UN and other multilateral institutions and to independent nongovernmental organizations.
Restoring UN funding is crucial so that the world body and its agencies can continue their core functions to address the Myanmar crisis. Governments should also maintain direct foreign assistance for emergency humanitarian aid, cross border assistance, and funding specifically designated for civil society groups for the promotion of democracy and human rights and to support independent media.
Thank you for your attention to these important matters.
Sincerely,
Elaine Pearson
Asia Director
Human Rights Watch
[1] Hasan also reiterated ASEAN calls for a “the cessation of violence” and “inclusive dialogue with all Myanmar stakeholders,” and urged “the cessation of attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructures,” the declaration of ceasefires, and channelling of humanitarian assistance without restrictions. His statement also reaffirmed Malaysia’s readiness to offer its good offices to “provide a conducive and neutral environment to facilitate inclusive dialogue with all Myanmar stakeholders”.
[2] Prominent independent election monitoring groups stated in an open letter earlier this year that a genuine election would be “impossible under current conditions,” citing the junta’s “draconian legislation banning opposition political parties, the arrest and detention of political leaders and democracy activists, severe restrictions of the media,” and the failed 2024 census, concluding there was “no possibility” an election under current conditions would be in line with international standards. UN human rights experts were more blunt, stating in late 2024 that: “We urge UN Member States to call this exercise what it is, a fraud.”
