Section 3 | RULES OF THE GAME activists—including MIDO’s executive director Ko Nay Phon Latt, who was jailed for four years by the military regime for his political blog 243—met to discuss digital rights and privacy issues.244 CSOs of all sectors recognize the potential of social media to increase government transparency and accountability through its ability to mobilize citizens around a cause and pressure the government to make changes. Indeed, stakeholders have the powerful example of an effective, internet-based activist movement from which to take inspiration, or regard as a cautious tale—the powerful exile activist community. In the words of one exile, such activists “by the late 1990s were aggressively using the internet, which soon sprouted hundreds of specialized Burmese political sites, chat rooms, newspapers and message boards,” which together with expats, successfully lobbied for more sanctions (passed in 1998, with more in 2004) and divestiture of international giants such as Walmart, Pepsi-Cola, and Levi Strauss.245 After the 2007 monk protests, “a new group on Facebook (“Support the Monks’ Protests in Burma”) attracted nearly half a million people.”246 Finally, the cross-cutting nature of both gender and technology concerns means that diverse CSOs are adversely affected by the gender digital divide and thus may be motivated to work collaboratively to close it, even if it falls outside their main areas of focus. For example, the Myanmar Education Consortium, in partnership with World Education and Save the Children Thailand, has been facilitating CSO input to the Ministry of Education’s draft National Education Strategic Plan to ensure that it adequately addresses issues such as informal education and minority language instruction that have been identified above as key barriers or opportunities related to the gender digital divide.247 243 244 245 246 247 Tupas, “Is Burma’s ‘Disconnectivity’ Deliberate?” Helena Galpaya, “LIRNEasia at Myanmar Digital Rights Forum,” LIRNEasia, December 18, 2016. Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, 343. Ibid., 351. Myanmar Education Consortium, “National Education Sector Plan,” n.d. Accessed February 14, 2017. Ending the Gender Digital Divide in Myanmar: A Problem-Driven Political Economy Assessment | 74