Week Eight: A Walk in the Park
Week Eight: A Walk in the Park
It has rained every single day in Yangon since I arrived in May. Some days it rains for hours on end, failing to show any mercy. Lately, however, I have been fortunate enough to catch some breaks in the rain and even get brief glimpses of blue sky.
I do my best to make the most of my freedom from the rain by going for walks downtown with the hopes of finding new and exciting places to eat; I am trying to break my routine of eating every meal at one of the same four restaurants every day. Everything is quite familiar now, so I am starting to notice many of the little details that eluded me when it was all new and overwhelming. Though I never imagined this would happen, Yangon is beginning to feel a little bit like home.
After work, I often find myself walking just a few blocks away, through Mahar Bandula Park. On the evenings it is not raining, the park is packed with families and young couples having picnics and playing games. Street vendors and salesmen are not allowed inside, so it is a nice break from being targeted by people looking to sell tours and souvenirs.
I have also found that the architecture here is simply incredible. A surprisingly high number of buildings remain from British colonial rule. This presents a multitude of problems of course (I have heard horror stories about our previous office leaking every time it rained), but it also creates a city landscape unlike any other.
Among my favorite buildings is the High Court building, located across the street from Mahar Bandula Park and only a few short blocks from both my office and hostel. While the court has been moved to the new capital, this building is an interesting glimpse of history and a reminder of just how far the reaches of English common law (which remains the basis of Myanmar’s legal system) extended.
My Internship:
It is amazing how quickly this internship is flying by, and I often forget about the projects I have done and what I have left to do. I started by creating a report on Sustainable Development Goal 16 and its application in the region. This was more of an introductory project and didn’t involve much legal research, but it familiarized me with the places I would need to look in the coming weeks.
My legal analysis began with a report on Myanmar’s special economic zone (SEZ) legislation. I detailed the administrative bodies the law creates, their powers, and the process by which they can create new zones. I also noted the bodies of law investors must comply with and the one-stop centers where they can find all the information they need. Finally, I provided some context on Myanmar’s SEZs today.
Then, I created a report on Chinese policy regarding investment in Myanmar’s SEZs. China’s policy on investing in Myanmar stems mostly from the Belt and Road Initiative and specifically involves the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC). My report overviews both and concludes with an analysis of how CMEC projects connect to Myanmar’s SEZs.
My current project is an analysis of Myanmar’s SEZ Law’s compliance with ASEAN’s SEZ guidelines. This project presents challenges because the guidelines postdate the SEZ law, so they use different vocabulary, and much of the information necessary to determine compliance is not available. Moreover, the roles the guidelines call for seem to be present in the SEZ law, but they don’t exactly align, making compliance challenging to articulate.
Looking forward, I have one more major report to write: an analysis of the migration issues surrounding SEZs. I will also create profiles of each SEZ in Myanmar and write a blog post about my internship for Open Development. My time is quickly coming to an end, so these next couple weeks will be intensely busy. I look forward to them, though, because I believe migration issues surrounding SEZs will prove to be incredibly interesting.