Salai Za Uk Ling
CHRO’s Executive Director
8 September 2025
Geneva
Mr. President, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates,
Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews has often described this august body as the Conscience of the World. Indeed, that description is increasingly true — and increasingly urgent. In a world marked by insanity, barbarism, and the erosion of compassion and empathy, those of us living in some of the world’s darkest situations look to this Council as the last source of hope, inspiration, and moral compass. It is now, more than ever, important that this Council does not merely exist as a forum of speeches, but that it acts decisively to inspire that last hope.
I stand before you today not as a politician or a general, but as a human rights defender — a believer in truth, justice, and freedom. I am one of thousands of seemingly insignificant individuals who have spent all of our adulthood struggling to defend the basic dignity of Myanmar’s most marginalized peoples. I will not stand here and repeat the counting of our dead, the listing of our destroyed homes, or the tally of our shattered lives. Enough has been said. Instead, I am here to challenge this Council to confront a single question:
In the immediate aftermath of the 2021 coup, the Secretary-General declared: “We will do everything we can to mobilize all the key actors and international community to put enough pressure on Myanmar to make sure that this coup fails.”
Today, more than four years later, this Council — the so-called conscience of the world — must look itself squarely in the mirror and ask: Have we done everything we can? Have we done enough to make the coup fail?
Because as we speak, the military junta is doing everything it can to make the coup succeed. It seeks to entrench itself in power through a sham election — an election planned atop the piles of bodies that keep growing each day, atop the anguish and tears of more than 50 million people, and fueled by the weapons and resources that continue to flow into its hands. And yet, the world remains eerily silent.
This silence is not neutral. It enables. It emboldens. It betrays the people of Myanmar who continue to resist tyranny at unimaginable cost.
Mr. President, it is no longer enough that the international community issues statements while doing little to stop the impunity with which the military murders, burns, and terrorizes our people. It is no longer enough to wring hands while the junta drops bombs on children, or to whisper concern while entire communities are erased. Impunity — whether by the junta or by non-state actors — must end.
Therefore, today we demand the following:
- Referral of the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court, so that those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity know that justice will find them.
- A global arms embargo, including an immediate ban on aviation fuel, so that no more bombs fall on villages, hospitals, schools, and places of worship.
- Stronger, coordinated sanctions targeting the military’s sources of power, so that the junta cannot finance its campaign of terror against its own people.
Excellencies, this is the test of whether the “Conscience of the World” has meaning — or whether it is just words. History will judge us all, but the people of Myanmar cannot wait for history. They need action, and they need it now.
The world promised that this coup would fail. It is time to make good on that promise.
Thank you.
The End
