To assist Myanmar in making the transition from military rule to a democracy, Melissa Crouch and her team are working with Myanmar scholars and policy thinkers to consider how constitutional law and reform can achieve lasting peace. Together with Martin Krygier and Theunis Roux, Melissa has been helping train key legal stakeholders in Myanmar. In 2019, Melissa published her book The Constitution of Myanmar in English and Burmese.
The purpose of this project is to support and equip key local actors to contribute to constitutional reform, democratic consolidation and lasting peace in Myanmar. This project builds on the work of the Australia-Myanmar Constitutional Democracy Project of UNSW Law. The project has three main components. The first component is to host an international workshop on “Peace Processes, Federalism and Constitution-making” at UNSW from 6-7 December 2018. Five Distinguished Visiting Scholars from Myanmar will be sponsored to attend and present at the event. The second component of the project is the publication of a book, The Constitution of Myanmar: A Contextual Analysis (with Hart Publishing’s leading series on Constitutions of the world). The English and Burmese version of the book will be published and disseminated in 2019-2020. This timely book by Crouch is the first to analyse the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar (Burma) in its historical, political and social context.