Myanmar: Outline of Rules Affecting Freedom of Expression 1. Introduction1 This Outline provides guidance to civil society and other interested stakeholders in Myanmar on the key elements of a legal framework governing freedom of expression which is consistent with international standards. In so doing, it also provides a tool for stakeholders to evaluate the consistency of the current legal framework with these standards. This Outline focuses on only the most important issues and is not intended to be an exhaustive guide to international standards. This Outline begins with a table providing an overview of the main framework of rules governing freedom of expression, including the right to information, as prescribed by international law or found in most jurisdictions. It then describes international standards on criminal and civil content rules, namely laws restricting freedom of expression to combat hate speech, to protect national security/public order, to address obscenity, to protect the judiciary, to address blasphemy, false news and defamation, to protect privacy and to provide for the right to information. Under international law, any restrictions on freedom of expression must meet the three requirements of being provided for by law and necessary to protect a legitimate interest. The Outline provides guidance on how the content restrictions can meet this test, noting the importance of adopting narrowly-tailored provisions targeting specific harms (such as hate speech or risks to national security) and noting areas where best practice or international law requirements call for avoiding restrictions altogether, such as in the area of blasphemy or protecting the judiciary from criticism. The Outline then turns to international standards on media regulation, highlighting the importance of regulatory bodies being independent and the promotion of media diversity, and detailing how different rules are appropriate for different types of media (such as print media, private broadcasters, public broadcasters and online communications). Although different countries have taken different approaches to certain aspects of media regulation, clear international standards and best practices have emerged in relation to many issues, such as the need for media regulators to be independent and the illegitimacy of licensing regimes for journalists. An overview table of the rules presented in this Outline is provided on the following page. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence. You are free to copy, distribute and display this work and to make derivative works, provided you give credit to Centre for Law and Democracy, do not use this work for commercial purposes and distribute any works derived from this publication under a licence identical to this one. To view a copy of this licence, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. 1 The Centre for Law and Democracy is a non-profit human rights organisation working internationally to provide legal expertise on foundational rights for democracy. 1