ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia

When Myanmar Exported Federalism

After World War II, Burma helped design a federal constitution for Ethiopia and Eritrea, while fighting a civil war with ethnic minorities demanding the same at home.

The former High Court Building in Yangon, Myanmar.

Federalism in Burma/Myanmar has been a long, winding road. From the armed encampments in the borderlands to the halls of power in Naypyidaw, Chiang Mai, Washington, London, and Berlin, successive generations of Burmese and ethnic non-Burmese politicians have debated the ideal federal arrangement for the country. It was the defining political question of the country in the last century and one that remains unresolved to this day.

The federal question in Burma (later Myanmar) is a politically sensitive one, and for some, it touches on profound questions of culture. For Karens in southeastern Myanmar and many other minority groups, the national struggle for self-determination and a homeland has now become deeply embedded in their cultural identity.

It has endured different discursive paradigms throughout the decades as well. It has been a destructive element for the Union and has been officially discussed in the country’s power centers. All told, federalism in Myanmar has come a long way.

This is a story about when newly independent Burma advocated for a federation and helped cultivate federal arrangements in East Africa, between Ethiopia and Eritrea, all while fighting a civil war with its own ethnic minorities demanding the same. In East Africa, Burma was actively theorizing and exporting federalism, even as it refused to institutionalize it at home. With the 35th Anniversary of Eritrean independence coming up, the author finds it fitting to discuss this often overlooked, yet consequential historical entanglement between the two and what Myanmar could learn from its own past advocacy.

In the aftermath of World War II, the future of Ethiopia and Eritrea, much like Burma, were open and uncertain. After the war, Italy had renounced all its African possessions and occupation, and the two territories were under British Military Administration. However, among the Four Victorious powers (i.e., the U.K., the U.S., France, and the Soviet Union), there was considerable debate about their administrative future. Ethiopia, with its longstanding position as the sole independent nation in Africa before the Italian occupation, argued that Eritrea should be united under its monarchical rule, while large segments of Eritrean society wanted independence. Yet, the “Four Powers” could not reach an agreement on the future of Eritrea.

The issue was subsequently discussed by the new United Nations. The fourth U.N. General Assembly then organized a commission to study the issue in 1949. This U.N. Commission for Eritrea included newly-independent Burma, Norway, Guatemala, South Africa, and Pakistan. The Burmese delegation was represented by Rangoon High Court Justice Aung Khine and Parliamentary Secretary Maung Maung Soe. In the initial phase of the commission, Aung Khine even served as its acting chairman. Justice Aung Khine was noted for his involvement in several U.N. commissions during U Nu’s years in office in Myanmar.

The commission considered three possible solutions to the Eritrea question: placing Eritrea under U.N. trusteeship pending eventual independence, permitting the full annexation of Eritrea by Ethiopia, and creating a federation between the two nations. The commission was “hopelessly divided” on this question, as reported by the contemporary news coverage of the time, with Norway calling for the annexation of Eritrea by Ethiopia, Myanmar and South Africa advocating a federation under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian crown, and the rest of the commission members advocating for a trusteeship – a theme that plagues the U.N. and its mechanisms to this very day.

The commission presented a long, detailed report to the U.N. General Assembly containing these divided recommendations. It was in this report that the Burmese delegation made a detailed recommendation on the issue, making a separate suggestion on the ideal federal arrangement for the country.

This is where the amusing historical irony set in. The Burmese delegation wrote a rather detailed power-sharing suggestion for the supposed federation plan and constitution in the report. According to the Burmese, Ethiopia, and Eritrea should have their own separate national governments and form a federal government accompanied by federal legislation and courts. The Burmese even laid out how this federal legislation should be organized and represented. They suggested a bicameral legislature in which the lower house would be elected on a proportional basis from the population as a whole and the upper house would be elected “on the basis of equal representation of the Ethiopian and Eritrean people.” The recommendation also included a power-sharing plan between the federal and national governments of the two nations.

Burmese suggestions for the federation between Ethiopia and Eritrea, excerpted from the Report of the United Nations Commission for Eritrea (1950).

In effect, the Burmese delegation created the backbone of a potential federal constitution between Ethiopia and Eritrea. This is despite the fact that Burma was then fighting ethnic insurgencies that were demanding similar arrangements. At the time Judge Aung Khine and Maung Maung Soe were drafting their recommendations, Rangoon had only recently survived a siege by the Karen National Union (KNU) and its troops. The KNU........

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