In 2013, Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia Community Legal Education Initiative (BABSEACLE) started working with 18 Myanmar Universities Law Departments and many other institutions, in order to develop the rule of law and access to justice. When we began working in Myanmar we recognized the value and need to register as an authorized Myanmar International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO) in order to more effectively and impactfully achieve the goals of our work and efforts.
This process, like many of the justice education initiatives we are involved in, required understanding, patience and positively providing insight and awareness of what we do and why to many persons within the Myanmar Government. As we did this we continued to build trust and understanding, as we more and more demonstrated what we and our university partners throughout the country were doing.
As Myanmar is a country in transition we knew this process would take time and we fully understood this. Rather than rush for results we simply kept communication lines open, provided any and all information asked of us, and made sure that it was clear to all involved what we were doing, how, why and with whom.
During this time we received many letters of support from Ministries, Departments, universities and others. We also were able to provide the 16 Myanmar University Memorandums of Agreement that we had signed over the past 2+ years.
Throughout it was a long but understandable process, with many different forms to fill out, many documents to collect, many signatures to obtain and many Ministries to meet. We though finally received notice that we received our temporary registration, which included clear instructions on how to transform this into a full registration later this year.
We are very grateful and proud of all who have been a part of helping to make this happen.
By Kyaw Htin, Programme Development Manager, BABSEACLE
Ministry of Education
Ministry of Foreign Affair Ministry of National Planning
Shan Region Chief Minister Sign Temporary Registration