Shall We Join? Human Rights Treaty Ratification in Hybrid Parliaments: The Case of Myanmar [2011-2021]

Only recently have legislative studies taken the domestic ratification of international treaties seriously. Yet, research remains focused on advanced democracies. This paper takes the case of Myanmar to enquire into the politics of international treaty signature and ratification in a hybrid parliament. It focuses on the decade of democratization that preceded the 2021 coup. During this transitional period, Myanmar’s elected government signed two UN treaty bodies pertaining to human rights: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Both were ratified by the legislature controlled by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party in 2017 and 2019 respectively. However, in 2019 legislators voted against a proposal to accede to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). How to make sense of such patterns? How did a parliament with seats reserved to the military handle debates and votes on human rights treaties? The study draws on the analysis of Burmese-language proceedings of the national parliament across two legislatures (2011-16 and 2016-21). Such inquiry into ratification mechanisms by legislative actors hopes to advance our understanding of how hybrid legislatures in non-Western contexts impact treaty-making processes.