Office Address:

145 Spruce St. suite #206
Ottawa, ONtario
Canada K1R 6P1
Tel: (613) 237-8056/ Fax: (613) 563-0017

Burma Working Group (BWG)

The Burma Working Group (BWG) is a loose network of Canadian based-organizations or individuals working on peace, justice, development, human rights and/or democracy in Burma.  It is informally linked with the Asia Pacific Working Group (APWG) of CCIC. 

The main purpose of the BWG is to: 

• Create a space where everyone feels welcome
• Share information
• Share human and financial resources (ex. bring activists from Burma to Canada)
• Highlight cases of Burma in the APWG meetings and events
• Develop good working relationships with Canadian civil servants working on Burma
• Propose and undertake, if possible, joint activities on specific issues (ex. Burma day in Parliament)

The BWG does not have a secretariat.  A core organizing committee is comprised of Rights & Democracy, APWG, CFOB and the Burma Forum.  Participants share the responsibility for the taking of minutes.  Approximately four meetings are held yearly at either CCIC in Ottawa, Rights & Democracy in Montreal, or by teleconference. 

Any organization or individual working or interested in working on the Burma file are welcome to participate in the BWG meetings. 

Participants agree that the “Burma Working Group” name will not be used on any public statement or lobbying document because it does not have a formal membership.  Consequently, individual BWG groups who support a given action need to decide whether or not they want to have their name on a public document.  Similarly, joint action can be proposed and each individual organization can decide to support the joint action or not.