Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made in securing full access to the Burmese districts of Rathedaung and southern Maungdaw to enable the UN fact-finding mission to assess reports from the Burma Human Rights Network of significant and lethal human rights violations.

The UK co-sponsored the UN Human Rights Council resolution of March 2017 that established the Fact-Finding Mission. We regret that the Burmese authorities have so far refused to grant the Mission access to Burma. We are maintaining international pressure, including through the UN Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly resolutions we co-sponsored in December 2017.

The UK has repeatedly lobbied the Burmese authorities to cooperate with the Fact-Finding Mission. The Minister for Asia and the Pacific pressed the Minister for the Office of State Counsellor on this in their meeting of 21 November in Burma.