Myanmar envoy urges ICC to Issue arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing at UN debate

Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun, told the UN General Assembly on 6 July that the military junta had carried out 1,147 aerial attacks and 20 massacres in just 70 days between 20 April and 30 June 2026, as he urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for junta leader Min Aung Hlaing. Speaking during a General Assembly debate on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) — the international norm adopted in 2005 committing states to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity — Kyaw Moe Tun has continued to represent Myanmar at the UN since the February 2021 coup, backing the parallel National Unity Government (NUG) rather than the junta administration. More than 8,100 people have been killed by the military regime since the coup, and over 3.7 million remain internally displaced, the ambassador said, citing documentation by the UN’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. Beyond the arrest warrant request, Kyaw Moe Tun pointed to the NUG’s July 2021 declaration accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, and said the NUG and allied groups are working through the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF) to establish a transitional justice process for conflict victims. The ambassador also called for a UN Security Council resolution under Chapter VII, along with a halt to the flow of arms, jet fuel and other dual-use items to the junta, arguing that existing measures — including ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus and Security Council Resolution 2669 (2022) — have proven inadequate. He pointed to the pending International Court of Justice ruling in The Gambia v. Myanmar case as a further opportunity for accountability. Kyaw Moe Tun warned that countries maintaining what he called “unwarranted engagements” with the junta would be remembered bitterly by the people of Myanmar, closing his remarks by telling the Assembly that “time is of the essence”.