Former American foreign secretary Julie Bishop, the Special Envoy of the United Nations to Myanmar, is in hot water because of an alleged conflict of interest that has damaged the trust of her people rights-protecting mission there.
The scandal centers on Bishop and her consultancy firm, Julie Bishop &, Partners, which recently accepted an engagement to provide strategic advice, stakeholder engagement and government relations to Australian firm Energy Transition Minerals ( ETM) in a dispute with Greenland over a massive stalled uranium mining project.
An ETM speech was the first to make the commitment announcement on January 13. Bishop’s engagement was first reported for Australian publication The Saturday Paper on March 8.
The following day, the Justice for Myanmar ( J4M ) research group issued a statement criticizing the engagement with ETM as a conflict of interest, in part because of ETM’s business partnership with Chinese firm Shenghe Resources.
According to The Saturday Paper report, Shanghe Resources is a major supporter of the alleged uranium venture and has” connections to various wing( s ) of the Chinese government”.  ,
ETM announced in early 2019 that Shenghe Resources and the state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation ( CNNC )– which is designated by the US Department of Defense as one of its listed” Communist Chinese military companies” – had co-invested in processing facilities for treatment of imported rare earth minerals in China, the same report said.
When Beijing, which is a big investment in Myanmar, including in mining ventures, is involved in any bishop’s consulting firm’s participation with a Chinese company entity, it must always be in conflict of interest.
Conflict of Interest is defined by the UN’s own morality business as” when our private interests, such as financial assets or outside relationships, interfere with the interests of the UN ( and that )… may not ask for or receive instructions or create representations on behalf of any State, people, object, or cause outside the United Nations” ( and that ) in the achievement of our duties.
This would indicate a conflict of interest exists between Bishop’s function as a UN envoy and her secret work for an American energy company, even if the ETM case doesn’t immediately include Myanmar.
Although perceptions of conflicts of interest are obviously different, elites are often covered in entitlement and protected by lawyers. The UN’s most prudent course of action would be to conduct a detailed and transparent investigation into the potential conflict of interest.
Bishop’s immediate departure, if for no other cause the poor magnification, would be the wonderful move. If Bishop is so focused on making money, then maybe a special minister to Myanmar isn’t the best choice at this time.
After a nearly nine-month difference when her father, Noeleen Heyzer, was fired from the position, António Guterres appointed Bishop as UN Secretary General Special Envoy on April 5, 2024.
From the start, the special envoy to Myanmar role was a part-time capacity, as Bishop also retained her position as chancellor of the Australian National University ( ANU).
Although Bishop’s collection was fraught, her decision was largely due to her involvement in negotiating tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts with the contractor Palladium while serving as Australian foreign minister. She joined the board of directors of the business only four months after leaving.
The Australian Financial Review reported in late February that Bishop was also under scrutiny for her role in granting ANU arrangements to Vinder Consulting, work by her former chief of staff Murray Hansen, who also works at Julie Bishop &, Partners.
The official ANU staff there are also members of Julie Bishop &, Partners, and the chancellor’s official office in Perth, Bishop’s hometown, was renovated for AU$ 800,000 ( US$ 503, 662 ). 3, 000 km apart, the ANU is located in Canberra.
It is not just the consulting controversy that makes Bishop no more fit to serve as special minister. Her focus wasn’t exactly grabbed by her short because it’s just one of her numerous part-time roles, likely to help her get a wealthy post-Guterres job in the UN.
Bishop hasn’t exactly been empty, traveling to significant provincial cities and participating in “multi-stakeholder” discussions for several months, even if he’s been doing it part-time. It’s whether she has been successful that works.
With the SAC’s browbeating and the Myanmar government’s 30 years of using committee to rig the UN and all the committee they dispatch, that won’t be easy to identify.
Bishop addressed the disturbing humanitarian impact of slashed foreign aid to one million people in Bangladesh in subsequent weeks. He was followed shortly by the UN’s minister general.
This problem, like all of Myanmar, definitely deserves one more” seized” of the subject than being distracted by a legal dispute over uranium mining in league with a Chinese firm in Greenland.  ,
Bishop’s potential conflict of interest raises two extremely crucial issues. Second, why have a UN special envoy to Myanmar anyway? The results of particular envoys'” good offices” efforts over the past 30 years have been inconsistent at best.
Bishop is the eighth envoy since 1995, coming in at a time when global politics on Myanmar is frequently discredited.
The failure of the Association of South East Asian Nations’ ( ASEAN ) Five-Point Consensus (5PC ) is the most glaring deficit, but so too are all the efforts dedicated to pushing that’ consensus’ and ASEAN’s lead.
Why does millions of dollars be wasted on an minister secretariat of several staffers who have been just as ineffective as their manager given the enormous economic impact that Myanmar’s people in need have had? The social global political betrayal of Myanmar is not even close to being described by flogging a dead horse.
And next, what role has additional politics and solution-plotting played in solving Myanmar’s problems? What kind of success can one derive from the government?
What is visible is growing violence in the nation, complicated patchworks of various revolutionary alliances, ethnic armed organizations ( EAOs ) in China’s thrall, and a National Unity Government ( NUG) obsessed with a Western windfall that just won’t come.
All the dark mysterious initiatives funded by various European donors, politics and conflict mediation have probably been a disgusting waste of funding and time.
The Bishop scandal gives Myanmar’s civil society, NUG and EAO leaders, as well as other opposition political parties, a push to demand an in-depth analysis of mediation efforts that are funded and led by foreign parties.
All those 290 organizations, including J4M, the independent media in Myanmar, and civil society organizations involved in peacebuilding should be asking for clarification as to what their goals are and how their financial support can be better used to assist Myanmar’s in need.
This should be straightforward, as many of the organizations and individuals that were operating during the 2010-2020 political” transition”, advising Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy ( NLD ), have been strategic advisors to the NUG and pro-Western EAOs such as the Karen National Union (KNU) and Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP ) since the 2021 military coup.
The people of Myanmar deserve to know what solutions are being hacked into their names by covert, unaccountable, and blatantly ineffective foreign “experts.”
Convening the same people, Myanmar intellectuals, Western plotters, NUG operators and the same Western-leaning EAO leaders or their “front persons” for four years has produced no gains.
It’s like having to watch repeated episodes of a bad sitcom. Despite the numerous workshops that Foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung attends, NUG diplomacy unfortunately failed.
The Center for Peace and Conflict Studies ( CPCS) holds clandestine workshops in Siem Reap, Cambodia, but if they are having any meaningful impact, it’s a very well-kept secret.
A less charitable interpretation would label them a waste of time and money that could be used to provide urgently needed medical care and humanitarian assistance in conflict areas.
This is no longer a matter of opinion. In the wake of the USAID cuts, the revolutionary complex can no longer afford specious exercises in solutions seeking.
Although the number of NUG advisors, including Igor Blaevi and the British scholar Michael Maret-Crosby, are undoubtedly motivated by good and should not be confused with Bishop, their actual impact on Myanmar’s revolutionary progress is at best negligible.
They are likely impediments to urgently needed momentum and reform, along with a number of others working in the background.
One of the other secretive outfits involved in behind-the-scenes maneuverings in Myanmar, Finland’s CMI ( the Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation ), had until recently” Make Peace Your Business” as its website’s slogan.
Bishop probably comprehends that message well, as do many others. Pretending to pursue peace may be beneficial for business. But it certainly isn’t benefiting the people of Myanmar.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst who studies human rights, conflict, and human rights issues in Myanmar.