Written by: Ellie Litvack
Edited by: Gabrielle Adams
In 1962, the first James Bond movie was released, the Cuban Missile Crisis almost caused nuclear fallout, and John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth. It was an eventful year for North America; but what about Asia? On the other side of the world, Myanmar’s military staged a coup, triggering a decades-long junta that continues to be fought against today.
Relations between the military and the people have always been strained. Indeed, when the National League for Democracy (NLD) won Myanmar’s first democratic election, the military refused to recognize the results of the election and placed the party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest. Ever since, the military has continuously attempted to prevent Suu Kyi and the NLD from running in elections and holding leadership positions in an attempt to hold onto their power. In late 2020, however, tensions escalated when the NLD won the election by a landslide. The military strongly contested the election, and, in February 2021, they staged a coup. Since then, the military has launched violent campaigns against thousands of protestors and resistants, and, as of 2025, controlled 30 to 40% of the country.
The Myanmar Armed Forces continue to launch brutal tactics against their opposition and civilians alike, launching airstrikes on schools, hospitals, and places of worship, rounding up and killing civilians, and burning civilian homes, yet the world remains silent. Even in the aftermath of its 2026 undemocratic election, MSNBC, along with other major news outlets, have not written a single article directly discussing Myanmar’s civil war in the past year, and Fox news hasn’t published an article on the subject since 2023.
So why the silence? One way to understand the lack of international attention is to examine how governments and institutions determine which global issues warrant engagement. Using criteria developed by Atie Asadikia, Abbas Rajabifard & Mohsen Kalantari—originally designed to evaluate priorities in global sustainability and development projects—can help shed some light on the situation. The framework offers four important criteria used to determine which international issues should be prioritized: interrelations, performance, scope, and alignment. Interrelations refer to how strongly an issue connects with other global challenges, performance concerns the ability of actors to meaningfully influence outcomes, scope reflects the scale and visibility of a problem, and alignment measures whether an issue corresponds with a government’s political interests and strategic priorities. Research using this framework shows that governments tend to prioritize alignment above all else, while academics place greater emphasis on interrelations. Industry actors involved in development initiatives tend to weigh all four criteria more evenly. Applying this framework helps explain why some crises gain international attention while others, such as Myanmar’s civil war, remain largely ignored.
Looking at Canadian relations with Myanmar through this framework helps explain why the conflict has received so little engagement. The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people and the 2021 military coup have severely weakened ties between the two countries. In terms of performance, Canada has so far been very limited, consisting largely of economic sanctions and diplomatic condemnation rather than direct involvement in the conflict. While peacekeeping is historically viewed as a strength of Canadian foreign policy, Myanmar presents a more complex case. Myanmar’s genocide of the Rohingya people and other political differences has created a significant misalignment between Myanmar’s governing authorities and Western governments, reducing the likelihood of deeper engagement.
More broadly, the conflict also lacks strong interrelations with the strategic priorities of many Western states, and its scope, despite its humanitarian severity, has not translated into sustained international attention. As a result, Myanmar remains peripheral to Western foreign policy agendas. Until the conflict becomes more closely tied to the political, strategic, or humanitarian priorities of Western governments, those in positions of power are likely to continue overlooking the ongoing human rights violations committed by the Myanmar Armed Forces.
To aid the Burmese people, you can donate to humanitarian organizations working on the ground by following this link.