Favourites of 2017: International Crisis Group on Myanmar

Looking back at 2017, Australia's Lowy Institute and contributors to its Lowy Interpreter website offer a selection of their favourite articles, books, films and TV programs of the year. This post, written by independent researcher Elliot Brennan, is part of the Favourites of 2017 debate thread and praises the role of Crisis Group's research in and analytical reports about Myanmar.

In a year of such mud and murk in Myanmar, far too little commentary has been well informed, balanced or timely.

Myanmar’s ballooning Facebook effect, which in 2015 emboldened many to vote in Aung San Suu Kyi’s landslide election victory, had a more sinister influence in the proliferation of hate speech in 2017. This ultimately led to conditions for what appears to have become the most deadly few months in modern Myanmar’s history.

There were few sources of consistently accurate and balanced information in the immensely emotional environment in which Myanmar exists for among news media, rights activists and too many casual analysts. That is an indictment on the state of commentary and the susceptibility to hyperbolic and emotive social media. Moreover, it has been wholly destructive in finding the solutions that such thorny problems need.

International Crisis Group has consistently cut through this echo chamber. Their nuanced and balanced reports on Myanmar have been a bedrock in a sea of false, misleading or downright dangerous reporting and advocacy from all sides. To their credit, the timely papers by ICG on the situation in Rakhine state, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, as well as Myanmar’s politics more generally, have proved distressingly prophetic. The reports are essential reading for anyone wanting to comment on Myanmar’s politics or the devastating events that have unfolded this year.

In 2018, we will no doubt need to find more oracles of balance and considered wisdom, lest Facebook and other more intentionally malign actors gobble up more of the hard-fought successes in the region and beyond.