Law; and (ii) provide reasoned written decisions that can be subject to administrative and judicial review. b. By instructing the relevant authorities to review existing policies and procedures (including the 2014 Immigration Department Handbook) with a view to aligning these with section 347 of the Constitution, rule of law principles and the State’s international human rights law obligations. c. By considering further options, such as transparency and anticorruption measures, to improve the authorities’ accountability. Development partners, including UN Member States as well as International Finance Institutions, and UN agencies, must also ensure that assistance to the Government enables necessary reforms and does not in any way entrench the existing discriminatory system, inline with recommendations of the Government’s advisory commission and with UN resolutions. This is particularly important with respect to the repatriation of refugees from Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand and other countries; and in relation to the Government’s plans to update national documentation systems, including by digitalizing identity cards issued by State authorities. 2. Background During five-odd decades of military rule in Myanmar, unelected military governments enacted the key instruments establishing the legal framework for citizenship in the country. The Burma Socialist Program Party, chaired by General Ne Win, introduced the 1982 Law and its three 1983 procedures,10 repealing two earlier laws related to citizenship. 11 At the time, General Ne Win framed the law in xenophobic terms, purportedly, as a necessary response to inward migration into then-Burma dating back to 1824, including by the so-called “camp followers” of the British colonial government, in apparent reference to persons with South Asian descent.12 In 1997, Senior General Than Shwe, chairperson of the State Peace and Development Council, introduced limited amendments to the 1982 Law.13 The 2008 Constitution, developed in the period of governments led by Senior General Than Shwe, reaffirmed existing restrictions on political participation by persons whose parent or parents the State does not recognize as citizens, and also introduced other restrictions, including section 59(f), which denies a citizen the right to be elected to the highest political office,14 by barring them from becoming the President of the Union if a member of their immediate family is not a citizen. While the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) led the government from March 2011 to March 2016, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy (NLD) party leader, called for the 1982 Law to be revised.15 Using existing laws, the USDP-led Government introduced significant albeit limited initiatives to provide identity cards to members of recognized “national races” in conflict areas, whose lack of documentation was associated with Myanmar’s long-running civil wars.16 Yet the USDP broadly opposed any changes to the law,17 instead redoubling its resort to complicated processes for citizenship “scrutiny” and “verification”.18 In the process of its Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council in 2015, Myanmar accepted only one of 17 recommendations specifically related to citizenship.19 Soon after the NLD-led government took office in April 2016, a Presidential Notification was issued in October to establish an inter-ministerial group to review the status of former citizens, who had acquired citizenship of other countries and now sought to return to Myanmar.20 Albeit limited in scope, this was significant as the first change to the legal framework for citizenship since 1997. It further indicated that the NLD recognized the existence of problems associated with the 1982 Law, and constituted a nod to the need for reforms as highlighted by Myanmar legal scholars.21 In August 2017, the government’s own Advisory Commission on Rakhine recommended a review of the 1982 Law.22 Publicly, the government broadly accepted its recommendations, and a committee to implement these was established. 23 However, the Government has sent mixed messages about its commitment to 4