Julie Bishop, a United Nations special envoy, gave a frightening assessment of Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country whose file she oversees, pointing out the worsening humanitarian problems and fighting between the warring parties. That was almost a year ago.
The humanitarian and political situation in Myanmar has not improved since Bishop’s report to the UN General Assembly in June 2025. Nor has it gotten better for the Rohingya Muslims and other minorities since she spoke specifically about them to the Assembly in September 2025, saying that “Myanmar’s multifaceted crisis requires our immediate attention and urgent action.”
The country is one of 10 that the UN says accounts for two-thirds of people facing high levels of acute hunger in the world.
The International Organization for Migration said in April that 250 people, mostly Rohingya refugees, died in the Andaman Sea after their boat capsized. In 2025, 427 Rohingya also died at sea, according to the UN Refugee Agency. More than 730,000 Rohingya who face political persecution in Myanmar fled their homes in what has been labeled an ethnic cleansing carried out by Myanmar’s military.
The military seized power on Feb. 1, 2021, when General Min Aung Hlaing overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, was arrested and later sentenced to decades in prison on charges condemned across the world as political. She is serving her term in what Myanmar authorities call a “designated residence.”
Nearly 3.6 million people are displaced inside the country. Close to 20 million need humanitarian help. In 2025, junta airstrikes killed at least 982 civilians, a 53 percent jump from the year before. At least 287 children died, making it the deadliest year for children since the 2021 coup.
Chris Gunness, a former UN spokesman who follows the crisis closely as head of the nongovernmental organization Myanmar Accountability Project, said that Bishop’s long stretches of silence have allowed Myanmar to fade from global attention. UN envoys are expected to keep the issues in their orbit front and center in the world’s consciousness and keep UN member states updated on political and other problems in the countries.
“The very fact that she hasn’t said anything for so long speaks volumes,” Gunness said. “It’s hard to conclude anything but the fact that she’s been an abject failure.”
Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for António Guterres, who appointed Bishop, told PassBlue in an email on May 22 that she is engaging with relevant parties, including those with influence over the violence in Myanmar. He said she will brief the General Assembly in June 2026 publicly.
Bishop, a former Australian foreign minister, was named by Guterres in April 2024. Apart from a private meeting with the Security Council earlier this year, she has said nothing publicly about Myanmar since then to the body. It has met at least three more times on the continuing issues in the country.
“Played like a violin”
Bishop recently resigned from her role as the chancellor of Australian National University amid a governance dispute. She has also been accused by civil society groups of conflict-of-interest matters, further complicating her UN role and undermining the reputation of her office. She did not respond to PassBlue’s request for comment sent to her UN email account.
In January 2025, she took a paid advisory role with Energy Transition Minerals (ETM), an Australian mining company, through her private firm Julie Bishop and Partners. A key ETM partner is Shenghe Resources, a partly state-owned Chinese company with rights to acquire up to 60 percent of ETM’s main mining project.
China is the Myanmar military’s main arms supplier and has provided diplomatic cover to the junta in the UN Security Council, experts say. Shenghe has also been linked to rare-earth mining in Myanmar that critics also say generates revenue for the military.
“The Special Envoy abides by all ethical and regulatory requirements by the United Nations,” Dujarric said. “There are no outstanding issues.”
Nevertheless, in March 2025, four civil society groups filed a formal complaint with the UN’s internal oversight body and sent a copy to Guterres, demanding an investigation.
“The Secretary-General can’t keep ignoring us and relegating responsibility for the worsening Myanmar crisis to a mining lobbyist,” said Khin Ohmar, the convener of an advocacy group called Progressive Voice. “This prolongs the suffering of the Myanmar people.”
Bishop is scheduled to make her first trip to Myanmar since the military formed a nominally civilian government. The visit, reported by Myanmar Now on May 20, comes as the junta is pushing for international recognition, yet the date of the visit is unclear.
This trip would make it her fourth to the country since her UN appointment. While critics say her visits to the military-led government only help in legitimizing the de facto authority, Dujarric told PassBlue that her trip aligns with Guterres’s call for continued dialogue with all relevant Myanmar parties.
Gunness said Bishop’s visits to the junta-ruled country have been poorly timed and counterproductive. “She was basically being played like a violin,” he said. “Many people felt it was wholly inappropriate, and that set back the cause of peace.”
Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
![[Re]Group - A Playbook for Turbulent Times -Subscribe Now](https://passblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/regroup-v2_unf2026_square_600.500@2x.webp)
The deeper problem is the UN’s fixation on “dialogue” between the genocidal junta and the pro-democracy forces. No Burma dictator has ever honored any agreement they signed. Negotiations with liars are pointless. Secondly, if the military regime is allowed to continue in any form, it will contrive to retake total power, repeating the same cycle of brutality again. So stop talking about “dialogue” with “all parties,” because when you do that, you are talking about surrender by the pro-democracy forces and the abandonment of everything they have fought for. It’s not going to happen, regardless of whether the China-backed junta has won a few battles lately.
This information is concerning. Mining interests! One also wonders if in addition to connections with the junta if she has a good line of communication to the unity government that has the UN ambassador’s seat, not to mention the Ethnic Armies.