GENEVA - The United States decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people fleeing Myanmar is an assault on human rights and human decency based on a cruel fiction that ignores overwhelming evidence of Myanmar's spiralling crisis, a UN expert warned today.
"Defying reality, this decision puts thousands at extreme risk while legitimising a brutal regime that continues to use weapons of war to attack civilians," said Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar.
"It is inconceivable that any good-faith review of Myanmar's situation could conclude that conditions are safe or improving," Andrews said. "The military junta has locked the country into a downward spiral of violence and repression. Attacks on civilians have reached record highs this year as the military burns villages, bombs churches, and jails, tortures, and executes its opponents."
On 25 November 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced the termination of TPS for Myanmar effective 26 January 2026. Nearly 4,000 Myanmar nationals currently benefit from this protection. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem justified the decision by claiming conditions in Myanmar - including upcoming elections and a ceasefire - "no longer hinder the safe return" of its nationals.
Andrews called the Secretary's reliance on the junta's pledge of 'free and fair' elections "deeply disturbing."
"The sham polls being staged by the junta are nothing more than a charade to entrench military dominance," he said. "You cannot have free and fair elections when credible candidates are jailed, opposition parties banned, independent journalists arrested, and the electorate terrorised into submission. No credible observer disputes these facts."
The Special Rapporteur said that many TPS beneficiaries are human rights advocates, opposition figures, journalists, and others who champion democracy and human rights - values historically upheld by the United States.
"Sending these champions of human rights and human decency back to Myanmar would expose them to detention, torture, forced conscription, and execution," Andrews warned. "Such forced returns would not only be morally indefensible but could violate the principle of non-refoulement, a cornerstone of international refugee and human rights law that prohibits returning individuals to places where they face persecution or serious harm."
"It is in the United States' national interest-and consistent with its international obligations-to protect those who will help rebuild Myanmar as a democratic, rights-respecting nation," the Special Rapporteur said.
