Myanmar civil society groups want investigation into UN special envoy

Regional and international civil society organizations called on the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to urgently open an investigation into alleged conflicts of interest over the business activities of his U.N. Special Envoy on Burma Julie Bishop, and to make the findings of this investigation public. Guterres appointed Bishop to the position on April 5.

“We also call on the U.N. General Assembly to immediately end the mandate of the Special Envoy, and on the Secretary-General to assume a leadership role in addressing the crisis in Myanmar directly,” the 290 civil society groups shared in a press release on March 17. It added that the lives of the people in Burma are in jeopardy.

Bishop denied there was a conflict of interest in her position as U.N. envoy after becoming a strategic advisor to Energy Transition Minerals (ETM) in January through her consulting firm. One major shareholder in an ETM project is Shenghe Resources, a partly state-owned Chinese rare earths mining company with possible commercial interests in Burma.

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