Myanmar Enacts Discriminatory Population Control Law, Further Threatening the Rohingya
London, 10 June 2015
On 23 May 2015, the Law for Health Care Relating to Control of Population Growth (The Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law 28/2015), which allows authorities the power to implement "birth spacing", was signed by President Thein Sein. The Law is one of four pieces of legislation that together make up the “Protection of Race and Religion Laws”, a package of bills reported to have been driven by nationalist Buddhist monks with an anti-Muslim agenda. The law permits the government to control population growth in certain areas by limiting how often women may have children. It has been widely condemned both for violating women’s rights and for its potential to be used as a tool for ethnic and religious discrimination against communities like the Rohingya.