On February 1, 2021, Burma’s military, the Tatmadaw, seized power in a coup, overturning the results of a democratic election and plunging the nation into crisis. The Tatmadaw deployed lethal force against peaceful protesters, carried out mass arrests, and launched a campaign of violence against civilians across the country, including mass killings, widespread torture, sexual violence, and airstrikes on civilian targets, that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The coup built on a long history of impunity. For close to six decades, Burma’s ethnic and religious minority communities, which make up approximately 30% of Burma’s population, suffered sexual violence, torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances at the hands of the Tatmadaw and other armed groups. At the same time, Burma has suffered a crisis of impunity—no senior commander has ever been held accountable for crimes which in 2010 the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar concluded could constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes. Since the 2021 coup, this violence has intensified, sustained in part by companies supplying aviation fuel and weapons to the military. Burma’s courts remain under military control, making the documentation work of Burmese human rights defenders essential to preserving any possibility of future accountability. In areas outside of military control, community-based organizations and human rights defenders are not only documenting atrocities but actively developing local justice mechanisms and laying the foundations for a future federal democracy, beginning to advance accountability from the ground up.
International accountability efforts are also advancing. Established in 2018, the IIMM is mandated to collect evidence of serious international crimes and violations of international law committed in Burma since 2011. In 2025, an Argentine federal court issued arrest warrants for 25 Burmese military officials, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, for genocide and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya. The case brought by The Gambia against Burma at the International Court of Justice, accusing the Tatmadaw of genocide against the Rohingya, remains active and the Internation Criminal Court investigation remains open. In the Philippines, survivors from Chin State have filed an appeal urging authorities to investigate war crimes committed by the Tatmadaw, a case that the Philippine Department of Justice has acknowledged meets the legal threshold for war crimes under its domestic law. A similar case is pending in East Timor.