In its annual report launched on Tuesday, the Impartial Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) stated it had made “vital progress” documenting crimes and figuring out these accountable, together with commanders of safety forces overseeing detention services.
Myanmar descended into civil warfare following the army coup of February 2021 and the detention of civilian leaders, together with President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. The takeover sparked mass protests, a violent crackdown on dissent and a nationwide armed resistance motion.
‘Important proof’
The crimes detailed in Tuesday’s report embrace burning of sexual physique elements, different types of sexual violence and abstract executions of captured combatants or civilians accused of being informers.
“We’ve uncovered vital proof, together with eyewitness testimony, displaying systematic torture in Myanmar detention services,” stated Nicholas Koumjian, Head of the Mechanism.
“We’ve made headway in figuring out the perpetrators, together with the commanders who oversee these services and we stand able to assist any jurisdictions prepared and in a position to prosecute these crimes.”
Command accountability
The report covers the interval from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025 and attracts on greater than 1,300 sources, together with almost 600 eyewitness testimonies, pictures, movies, paperwork, maps and forensic proof.
It additionally particulars intensified investigations into aerial assaults on faculties, houses and hospitals – together with incidents within the days following the March 2025 earthquake, when rescue operations had been nonetheless underway.
The UN Human Rights Council-mandated investigators are analysing the composition of the Myanmar Air Power and its chain of command to establish these accountable for such strikes.
New investigations have additionally been opened into atrocities in Rakhine state, the place the army and the ethnic armed group Arakan Military are battling for management, alongside ongoing probes into crimes dedicated in opposition to the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017.
Worldwide accountability
Proof collected by investigators has already supported proceedings earlier than the Worldwide Legal Courtroom (ICC), the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ) and in Argentina.
It contributed to the ICC Prosecutor’s November 2024 request for an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s army chief and to the Argentine Federal Courtroom’s February 2025 warrants in opposition to him and 24 others.
“Our report highlights a continued enhance within the frequency and brutality of atrocities dedicated in Myanmar,” Mr. Koumjian stated.
“We’re working in direction of the day when the perpetrators must reply for his or her actions in a courtroom of legislation.”
Spiralling disaster
Preventing between the army, pro-democracy forces and ethnic armed teams has displaced tens of millions and pushed the nation into deep political, financial and humanitarian turmoil.
The nation additionally faces the long-running penalties of the 2017 army operations in opposition to the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state.
These campaigns – described by the then UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’advert Al Hussein as “a textbook instance of ethnic cleaning” – pressured lots of of hundreds of Rohingya to flee throughout the border into Bangladesh, the place most stay in crowded refugee camps.
A number of pressures
Investigators warn their work is being undermined by the UN’s liquidity disaster, which have reduce the mechanism’s 2025 price range to simply 73 per cent of the accepted quantity and would require a 20 per cent discount in common budget-funded workers in 2026.
To handle useful resource constraints and operational challenges – together with lack of direct entry to witnesses in Myanmar, safety dangers and cybersecurity threats – the investigation crew has adopted a three-year Strategic Plan, specializing in strengthening operational resilience and enhancing capability.
