A/HRC/42/CRP.3
9.
No business enterprise active in Myanmar or trading with or investing in businesses
in Myanmar should enter into a business relationship of any kind with the security forces of
Myanmar, in particular the Tatmadaw, or any enterprise owned or controlled by them,
including subsidiaries, or their individual members. Given the global reach of Myanmar’s
jade and ruby trade, the involvement of the Tatmadaw in its extraction and the Tatmadaw’s
responsibility for human rights and international humanitarian law violations perpetrated in
mining areas, businesses should ensure they are not contributing towards, or benefiting from,
those violations. In parallel, investment in the private sector, whether by private businesses
or international financial institutions, should prioritize supporting the growth of alternative
economic actors to the Tatmadaw and associated businesses.
II. Mandate, methodology, and international legal and policy
framework
A.
Mandate
10.
Human Rights Council resolution 34/22 (2017) mandated the Mission “to establish
the facts and circumstances of the alleged recent human rights violations by military and
security forces, and abuses, in Myanmar, in particular in Rakhine State, including but not
limited to arbitrary detention, torture and inhuman treatment, rape and other forms of sexual
violence, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, enforced disappearances, forced
displacement, deportation and unlawful destruction of property, with a view to ensuring full
accountability for perpetrators and justice for victims”. Resolution 39/2 (2018) extended the
Mission’s mandate and gave it the additional responsibility of ensuring it had fully
documented, verified, consolidated and preserved the evidence collected in order for the
material to be effectively shared, accessed and used by the Independent Investigative
Mechanism for Myanmar.
11.
In its 2018 report the Mission concluded on reasonable grounds that the Tatmadaw
has been directly involved in gross violations of human rights law and serious violations of
international humanitarian law, including acts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war
crimes, in Myanmar. The Mission is now fulfilling its mandate further by investigating how
the Tatmadaw’s economic interests enable the Tatmadaw to perpetrate violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law and how businesses are reaping the benefits
of the Tatmadaw’s unlawful activities. It is clear to the Mission that the Tatmadaw’s ability
to draw upon alternative sources of revenue, outside the official military budget, enables it to
operate without effective oversight from the civilian side of the Government or through the
Parliament. The Tatmadaw’s financial isolation would help deter continuing and future
international human rights and international humanitarian law violations, contribute towards
accountability for those committed in the past, and encourage the transformation of the
Tatmadaw and end its political and economic supremacy in Myanmar.
12.
In fulfilling its mandate to ensure “full accountability for perpetrators and justice for
victims”, the Mission also applied rules and principles of international law that prohibit
foreign States from contributing to violations of international human rights and humanitarian
law. These are prohibitions that, when not adhered to, enable the Tatmadaw to perpetrate the
types of violations that the Mission documented in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States. The
Mission looked specifically at the transfer of arms and related equipment from foreign States
to the Tatmadaw following the wide condemnation of the Tatmadaw’s conduct in northern
Rakhine in October 2016. The Mission’s findings from this investigation provide the
international community with a more complete understanding of Myanmar’s human rights
crisis. This understanding should compel the international community, specifically the
United Nations Security Council, regional and intergovernmental organizations, and
individual States to make arms transfer sanctions an integral part of a coordinated multilateral
approach to accountability, justice and ending the human rights crisis in Myanmar.
6
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