Business & Digital Rights
(Myanmar Business Associations Status)
Myanmar Digital Rights Forum 2020
28 February 2020
Thaung Tin, KMD

Business Associations
• UMFCCI and UN Global Compact
• Myanmar Computer Federation (MCF) and
A4AI
• Myanmar Digital Economy Association

1. UMFCCI & UN Global Compact
• The four pillars, ten Principles of the UN Global Compact
– Human Rights, Labor Rights, Environment Rights, Anti
Corruption (more than digital rights)
• Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect internationally
proclaimed human rights.
• အခ ြေြေံမူ ၁-
စီးပ ီးခ ီးလုပ်ငန်ီးမ ီးသည် နုင်ငံတက က လက်ြေံ သခ တူး ီးသည် လူအ
ြေင်အခ ီး က ကယ်ခစ င်ခ က်မှုမ ီး ကု ခလီးစ ီးလုက်န ြီးပီး အခး က်အပံ
ပြု မည်။
•
• Principle 2: Businesses should ensure that they are not complicit in human
rights abuses
• အခ ြေြေံမူ ၂-
လူအြေင်အခ ီးြေ ြုီးခ က်မှုမ ီးတင် မမတုပါ၀င်ပက်သက်မှုမ မခစ ။

1. UMFCCI & UN Global Compact (Cont.)
The UN Global Compact supports companies to:
• Do business responsibly by aligning their strategies
and operations with Ten Principles on human rights,
labor, environment and anti-corruption; and
• Take strategic actions to advance broader societal
goals, such as the UN Sustainable Development
Goals, with an emphasis on collaboration and
innovation.

1. UMFCCI & UN Global Compact (Cont.)
The UN Global Compact Network in Myanmar:
• Launched on 1 May 2012 by then UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-Moon
• UMFCCI and implementation partner MBCA managed to
organized over 300 members signatories during 2013-2015.
• Unfortunately, due to extra effort to follow the guidelines,
writing communication on progress report and lack of
support, members slowly decreased to just over 200 in 2018
• UMFCCI has tried her best to promote UNGC again by forming
Responsible Business and Natural Resources Development
Committee to provide awareness, training and other
supports.

2. Myanmar Computer Federation(MCF)
and Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI)
• MOU in 2015 with the endorsement of Ministry of
Information and Communication Technology
• A4AI: a broad coalition working to enable everyone,
everywhere to access the life-changing power of the Internet
• To achieve the goal of affordable access for all (less than 2% of
monthly income for 1GB), A4AI employs a combination of
research, in-country engagement, and international advocacy
• 1st A4AI-Myanmar Multi-stakeholder Forum took place on
March 26, 2015 in Yangon

2. Myanmar Computer Federation(MCF)
(other activities)
• ICT providers (telcos, ISPs, social medias, software developers
etc) have contributed to violations of freedom of expression,
access to information through
– Arbitrary restrictions on certain types of expression
– Blocking or filtering content
– System disruption or shutdown
• Studying to promote the guiding principles on Business and
Human Rights in the ICT sector adopted by UN Human Rights
Council
• Try to adopt ranking and rating of digital rights on ICT
companies

3. Myanmar Digital Economy Association
• Established in 2019 under UMFCCI
• Going to promote six high level general principles by
OECD for protecting digital consumers.
– 1. Fair business and advertising practices
– 2. Appropriate disclosures:
– 3. Effective processes for transaction confirmation and
payment:.
– 4. Measures to address privacy and security risks:
– 5. Product safety across e-commerce supply chains:
– 6. Meaningful access to effective mechanisms to
resolve disputes:

Things to do and recommendation:
• UMFCCIF: more and continuous effort to promote UNGC
• MCF: To engage with Telcos, ISP, local and international ICT
companies including social media companies to behave moral
authority and follow UN guiding principles on Business and
Human rights
• MDEA: To protect digital rights for on line and digital
customers
• Third party NGOs and CSOs: Regular ranking and rating report
on companies on digital rights

Further Information:
• United Nation Global Compact
– https://www.unglobalcompact.org
• Alliance for Affordable Internet
– https://www.a4ai.org
• United Nations (2011) Guiding Principles on Business and Human
Rights, Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect, and
Remedy” Framework
– https://www.ohcht.org/
• Digital Rights and Business
– https://www.accessnow.org
• Toolkit for protecting digital consumers – OECD.org
– https://www.oecd.org

Thank you!
uthaungtin@gmail.com