News
Statement on political party deregistration in Myanmar
- Statement issued by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
29 March 2023
Australia is seriously concerned about the further narrowing of political space in Myanmar resulting from the imposition and requirements of the new Political Party Registration Law. Many parties who previously participated in the political process in Myanmar, including the National League for Democracy (NLD), are no longer registered.
Any political process in Myanmar that excludes participation by a broad range of stakeholders will not lead to a genuinely representative outcome, and risks further violence and instability. We urge the regime to ensure all stakeholders can participate in Myanmar’s democratic future, and that all voices can be heard.
The people of Myanmar continue to show their courage and commitment to a democratic country in the face of increasing repression and violence by the regime. We will continue to closely monitor the regime’s actions, and call for the restoration of democracy including credible elections.
Targeted sanctions in response to human rights violations in Myanmar and Iran
- Joint media release from Senator The Hon Penny Wong, Minister for Foreign Affairs, with:
- The Hon Tim Watts MP, Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs
01 February 2023
The Australian Government is imposing targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on individuals responsible for egregious human rights abuses in Myanmar, as well as sanctions on entities enabling the repression of its people.
The Government is also imposing additional sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities over abhorrent abuses of human rights.
Sanctioned individuals include 16 members of the Myanmar military regime’s governing State Administration Council (SAC), as key individuals directly responsible for the coup d’état two years ago today.
Two Myanmar military controlled entities, Myanmar Economic Public Holdings Ltd (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC), will also be subject to targeted financial sanctions.
Over the past two years Australia, ASEAN and international partners have repeatedly called on the Myanmar regime to engage in constructive dialogue and find a peaceful and durable resolution to the ongoing crisis.
Despite these calls, the regime has continued its anti-democratic actions against the people of Myanmar, including violence and recent steps targeting opposition voices.
The military regime has responded violently to any form of political expression, including peaceful protests. There is evidence thousands of civilians, including children, have been jailed, tortured, or killed.
Australia will continue to closely monitor the regime’s actions. We will be looking to see improvements for people on the ground and moves towards the restoration of democracy, including credible elections.
In this context, we will continue to keep our targeted sanctions toward Myanmar under review.
Australia strongly supports ASEAN’s leadership as a key element in responding to the Myanmar crisis.
The Australian Government is also imposing Magnitsky-style sanctions on 16 Iranian individuals and one Iranian entity.
Among those subject to Magnitsky-style human rights sanctions are the Basij Cooperative Foundation, and senior law enforcement, political and military figures – including those within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – involved in the violent crackdown on protests following the death of Mahsa ‘Jina’ Amini and the continued oppression of the people of Iran.
Additionally, Australia is joining partners to impose additional targeted financial sanctions on four Iranian individuals and four entities involved in the production and supply of drones to Russia.
Iranian-made drones have been used by Russia to target Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Australia stands with the people of Myanmar, the people of Iran and with the people of Ukraine.
We employ every strategy at our disposal towards upholding human rights – ranging from dialogue and diplomacy to sanctions – consistent with our values and our interests.
For further information on Australia’s sanctions frameworks, please visit: Sanctions regimes | Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (dfat.gov.au)
Myanmar: Joint Statement on the two year anniversary of the military coup
1 February 2023
A joint statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union, and the Foreign Ministers of Albania, Armenia, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, the Federated States of Micronesia, Georgia, Ghana, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau, Serbia, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States.
On 1 February 2021, the Myanmar military staged a coup d'état and seized power against the will of the people, plunging the country into a deep political, economic and humanitarian crisis.
Over the last two years, the people of Myanmar have courageously demonstrated their commitment to a democratic country, demanding respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and showing determined resilience in the face of unspeakable atrocities.
Since the coup, the military regime has violently cracked down on any form of opposition, including peaceful protests. Credible reports indicate that thousands of civilians, including children, have been jailed, tortured and killed.
There are mounting reports that air strikes, bombardments and the mass burning of villages and places of worship have targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure. Reports of torture and sexual violence by the security forces are widespread. The prolonged conflict has seen thousands of civilian casualties, over 17 million people in need and 1.5 million people displaced from their homes.
We welcome and support the central role of ASEAN in addressing the crisis in Myanmar, including the efforts of the ASEAN Chair and ASEAN Special Envoy to Myanmar.
We welcome the UN Security Council Resolution 2669 (2022) on the situation in Myanmar which calls for the immediate cessation of violence and the upholding of universal human rights, the provision of full and unhindered humanitarian access and the protection of civilians. It calls on the military regime to effectively and fully implement ASEAN's Five-Point Consensus, and to immediately release all arbitrarily detained prisoners, including President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. It reaffirms our support for the ASEAN Special Envoy to Myanmar and the UN Special Envoy to Myanmar and encourages their close coordination. It also urges all parties in Myanmar to work constructively with both Envoys to commence dialogue to seek a peaceful solution.
The military overruled the democratic wishes of the people of Myanmar as expressed in the November 2020 General Election, when they seized power on 1 February 2021. We reiterate our call for the return of Myanmar to a democratic path. The military regime must end violence and create space for meaningful and inclusive dialogue to allow for any democratic process to resume.
We once again call on all members of the international community to support all efforts to hold those responsible for human rights violations and abuses to account; to cease the sale and transfer of arms and equipment which facilitate atrocities; and to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of Myanmar's people, including its most vulnerable communities.
We remain resolute in our support for all those working peacefully towards an inclusive and democratic future for the people of Myanmar.
24 October 2022
ကချင်ပြည်နယ်တွင် အရပ်သားပြည်သူများကို တိုက်ခိုက်မှုများအပေါ် ပူးတွဲကြေညာချက်
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမြောက်ပိုင်း၊ ကချင်လူထုစုဝေးမှုတစ်ခုကို စစ်တပ်က လေကြောင်းတိုက်ခိုက်မှုပြုလုပ်ခဲ့ခြင်းကြောင့် လူအများအပြား အသက်ဆုံးရှုံးကြရသည့်သတင်းကို မိမိတို့ကြားသိရပါသည်။ အဆင်ခြင်မဲ့တိုက်ခိုက်မှုများကြောင့် အပြစ်မဲ့အရပ်သားများ ထိခိုက်ခြင်း၊ အတိဒုက္ခခံစားရခြင်းများ နိုင်ငံတဝန်းဖြစ်ပေါ်လျက်ရှိပါသည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်းနှင့် ဒေသတွင်းကြုံတွေ့နေရသော အကျပ်အတည်းနှင့် မတည်ငြိမ်မှုများအတွက် စစ်အာဏာရှင်အဖွဲ့အစည်းတွင် တာဝန်ရှိကြောင်းနှင့် နိုင်ငံတကာ လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားမှုဥပဒေအရ အရပ်သားများကို အကာအကွယ်ပေးရမည့် ၎င်း၏တာဝန်ဝတ္တရားကို အလေးမထားကြောင်းကို ယခုဖြစ်ပွါးခဲ့သော တိုက်ခိုက်မှုက အထင်အရှားပြသနေပါသည်။
ကြေညာချက်ကို သြစတြေးလျ၊ ကနေဒါ၊ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာ ဥရောပသမဂ္ဂသံရုံးနှင့် ဥရောပသမဂ္ဂအဖွဲ့ဝင်နိုင်ငံများ၏ သံရုံးများဖြစ်ကြသော - ချက်သမ္မတနိုင်ငံ၊ ဒိန်းမတ်၊ ဖင်လန်၊ ပြင်သစ်၊ ဂျာမနီ၊ အီတလီ၊ နယ်သာလန်၊ စပိန်နှင့် ဆွီဒင်နိုင်ငံ တို့အပြင် နော်ဝေ၊ ဆွစ်ဇာလန်၊ ယူကေနှင့် အမေရိကန်နိုင်ငံတို့မှ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာသံအမတ်ကြီးများ၊ သံရုံးယာယီတာဝန်ခံများနှင့် သံရုံးအကြီးအကဲများက ပူးပေါင်းလက်မှတ်ရေးထိုးထုတ်ပြန်ပါသည်။
Joint Statement on Attacks on Civilians in Kachin State
We are following reports of a military air strike targeting a Kachin gathering resulting in the deaths of a large number of civilians. Indiscriminate attacks which include civilian victims continue to cause extraordinary harm and suffering across the country. This attack underscores the military regime’s responsibility for crisis and instability in Myanmar and the region and its disregard for its obligation to protect civilians and respect the principles and rules of international humanitarian law.
Signed by the Ambassadors, Chargés d’Affaires, and Heads of Mission from: Australia, Canada, the Delegation of the EU and European Union Member States with presence in Myanmar: Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden; as well as Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Australia Awards Scholarships in Myanmar 2023 intake
Australia Awards Scholarships 2023 intake closed on 29 April 2022 (11:59pm Canberra time/ 8:29pm Yangon time). The next round will open in early 2023.
The application process for other intakes is underway and applicants will receive notification of the outcome of their application in due course.
Australia Awards Myanmar scholarships are available for Masters-level study in Australia. In Myanmar, applicants are required to be 25 years or older at 30 April 2022. Applicants are also required to have completed Bachelor’s degree and have a minimum of 2 years of work experience.
Australia Awards scholarships are prestigious international awards offered by the Australian Government to the next generation of global leaders for development. Through study and research, recipients develop the skills and knowledge to drive change and help build enduring people-to-people links with Australia.
Applicants are assessed on their professional and personal qualities, academic competence and, most importantly, their potential to have a positive impact on development challenges in Myanmar.
Applications are strongly encouraged from women, people with disability and other marginalised groups.
For more information:
Country Profile 2023: click here
Referee Report Template (doc): click here
Curriculum Vitae Template (doc): click here
Scholarships Policy Handbook: : click here
23 July 2021
Joint Statement from Ambassadors to Myanmar
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာသံအမတ်ကြီးများ၏ ပူးတွဲကြေညာချက်
ထောင်အတွင်းလက်ရှိဖြစ်ပွားနေသော ကိုဗစ်-၁၉ ရောဂါကူးစက်ပြန့်ပွားမှုကို ကောင်းမွန်စွာကိုင်တွယ်ထိန်းချုပ်နိုင်ခြင်းမရှိသောကြောင့် ရန်ကုန်အင်းစိန်ထောင်အတွင်း ဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းခံနေရသူများက ဆန္ဒပြမှုတစ်ရပ်ဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့ကြောင်းမိမိတို့သိရှိရပါသည်။ ဤအခြေအနေကို ငြိမ်းငြိမ်းချမ်းချမ်းဖြေရှင်းရန်၊ ယင်းထောင်နှင့် အခြားထောင်များအတွင်းရှိ ဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းခံထား
ရသူအားလုံးအတွက် ကောင်းမွန်သော ကျန်းမာရေးစောင့်ရှောက်မှု နည်းလမ်းတကျရရှိရေးအတွက် အခြေခံလူ့အခွင့်အရေးများကို လေးစားလိုက်နာရန် သက်ဆိုင်ရာအာဏာပိုင်များကို မိမိတို့တိုက်တွန်းပါသည်။ ဆက်လက်ဖြစ်ပေါ်ပြောင်းလဲနေသောအခြအနေကို မိမိတို့အနီးကပ်စောင့်ကြည့်နေပါသည်။
ဤကြေညာချက်ကို ဩစတေးလျ၊ ကနေဒါ၊ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာဥရောပသမဂ္ဂသံရုံးနှင့် ဥရောပသမဂ္ဂအဖွဲ့ဝင်နိုင်ငံများ၏သံရုံးများဖြစ်ကြသော - ချက်သမ္မတနိုင်ငံ၊ ဒိန်းမတ်၊ ဖင်လန်၊ ပြင်သစ်၊ ဂျာမနီ၊ အီတလီ၊ နယ်သာလန်၊ စပိန်နှင့် ဆွီဒင်နိုင်ငံ တို့အပြင် ဆွစ်ဇာလန်၊ နော်ဝေ၊ ယူကေနှင့် အမေရိကန်နိုင်ငံတို့မှ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာသံအမတ်ကြီးများ၊ သံရုံးယာယီတာဝန်ခံများ နှင့် သံရုံးအကြီးအကဲများက ပူးပေါင်းလက်မှတ်ရေးထိုးထုတ်ပြန်ပါသည်။
We are aware that detainees in Yangon’s Insein Prison staged a protest in part to raise awareness about the inadequate handling of the current COVID-19 outbreak in the facility. We urge the relevant authorities to resolve the situation peacefully and respect the basic right to proper healthcare for all those detained inside this and other prisons. We are following the situation closely as it continues to evolve.
Signed by the Ambassadors, Chargés d'Affaires, and Heads of Mission from Australia, Canada, the Delegation of the EU and European Union Member States with presence in Myanmar: Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden; as well as Switzerland, Norway, the United Kingdom; and the United States.
Media Release on Myanmar and the Rohingya crisis - 23 October 2018
The recent UN Fact-Finding Mission found that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and likely genocide had occurred in Rakhine State.
In response, the Government of Australia has decided to impose targeted financial sanctions and travel bans against five Myanmar military officers responsible for human rights violations committed by units under their command.
Australia will continue to support the humanitarian needs of those affected, and to work with Myanmar and our partners in the region to encourage efforts towards a long term and durable solution to the crisis.
Media enquiries should be directed to [email protected].
Media release: Myanmar and the Rohingya crisis, 23 October 2018
BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP PLATFORM JOINT PRESS RELEASE - 27 November 2017
STATEMENT ON THE DIPLOMATIC TRIP TO NOTHERN RAKHINE - 2 October 2017
Humanitarian assistance for Myanmar and Bangladesh - 9 September 2017
Australia is deeply concerned by the escalating violence in Rakhine State in Myanmar and the resulting humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
We call for restraint by the Myanmar authorities, for the protection of civilians, and for unfettered access to be granted to humanitarian workers.
We recognise the heavy burden placed on Bangladesh as a result of the conflict. The United Nations estimates that over 270,000 people have now crossed the border in order to escape violence in Rakhine State.
Australia will provide up to $5 million to help respond to the crisis. Our assistance will contribute to life-saving food being provided to up to 300,000 people.
Australian support in Bangladesh will be provided through the World Food Programme and the International Organisation for Migration. In Myanmar, Australia will work with the Red Cross movement to reach those affected by the conflict.
This funding will bring Australia’s assistance for Rohingya and affected communities in Myanmar and Bangladesh to over $50 million since 2012.
Australian Government statement on the situation in Rakhine State - 5 September 2017
Australia is deeply concerned by the escalation in violence in Rakhine State, including disturbing reports that civilians have been targeted and villages burned down.
We acknowledge Myanmar is dealing with a serious security challenge in Rakhine State following attacks on government forces on 25 August, which have been claimed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. We condemn all such violent attacks.
We urge all sides to exercise restraint and respect human rights. We reiterate our call for proportionality, the protection of civilians and an end to the use of violence.
We welcome the Government of Myanmar’s commitment to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches all communities in need and without putting people at further risk. Aid needs to flow quickly to vulnerable communities.
The events in Rakhine State underscore the urgency of implementing the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State as fully and quickly as possible. Australia stands ready to support Myanmar’s efforts in this regard.
Australian Embassy statement on situation in Rakhine State - 29 August 2017
Australia strongly condemns the attacks against government security forces in northern Rakhine State. We offer our condolences to the victims and their families. Appropriate measures to bring the perpetrators to account should be taken. Violence will only worsen the many development, human rights and security challenges facing Rakhine State.
We urge respect for law and order and an end to the use of violence. It is important that civilian populations of all communities are protected and that all responses are proportional.
Violence is not the solution to Rakhine State’s challenges. Recent developments underline the need for long-term solutions. We have commended the Government of Myanmar for establishing the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State and we welcome its commitment to implement the Commission’s recommendations to the fullest extent and within the shortest timeframe possible. We support these efforts to restore stability, peace and hope to all people in Rakhine State.
MEDIA RELEASE - Friday 2 September 2016:
More Australian students to study in Myanmar
85 Australian undergraduate students will study and undertake work placements in Myanmar in 2017 through the Australian Government’s flagship New Colombo Plan education program.
“Students from five Australian universities will study a broad range of subjects including community legal education, architecture and political economy” said Ambassador Nicholas Coppel, Australian Embassy Yangon.
“New Colombo Plan mobility students will return to Australia with new insights and understanding about Myanmar and new friendships that will last a lifetime,” Ambassador Coppel said.
New Colombo Plan 2017 mobility projects in Myanmar will see Australian students visiting Yangon Technological University and University of Yangon. Students will study in the fields of architectural design, legal English, and Myanmar’s Political Economy.
“These are exciting projects that demonstrate the many opportunities for Australian students to deepen their academic and life experiences through study and work placements in Myanmar”, Ambassador Coppel said.
The New Colombo Plan is an initiative of the Australian Government to lift knowledge of the Indo-Pacific by supporting Australian undergraduate students to study and undertake internships in the region.
For more information on the New Colombo Plan, visit www.dfat.gov.au/new-colombo-plan or follow @NewColomboPlan
Official Facebook page of the Australian Embassy in Myanmar
The Australian Embassy in Myanmar now has an official Facebook page. Like, Share and Comment with us at https://www.facebook.com/AusEmbMyr.
Humanitarian assistance to Myanmar
The Australian Government will deploy a package of humanitarian relief supplies to those displaced by flooding and landslides in Myanmar following Cyclone Komen.
In partnership with the Myanmar Government, Australian non-government organisations and the United Nations, Australia will provide family kits comprising kitchen sets, bedding, clothing, mosquito nets, hygiene kits and school supplies.
This assistance builds on the $2 million package announced on 5 August and brings Australia’s total contribution to $3 million in response to a request from the Government of Myanmar.
Australia will work with Save the Children, CARE Australia and UN partners to provide 300,000 people with temporary shelter, safe drinking water and health care. We are also supporting emergency reproductive health services for those impacted by the natural disaster.
The Australian Government will continue to work closely with the Myanmar Government and partners to ensure that our humanitarian assistance is meeting the needs of the most affected communities.
Media release: Additional humanitarian assistance to Myanmar, 7 August 2015
Media release: Humanitarian assistance to Myanmar, 5 August 2015
Implementation of Australian Visa Application Centre (AVAC)
From 18 May 2015 applications for visas to Australia will need to be lodged at the Australian Visa Application Centre (AVAC), Yangon. See Implementation of AVAC.