The Justice League
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“I think we can’t just be there to assist people—we also need to be there to protect them,” says Damian Lilly, a humanitarian and human rights specialist who has spent two decades confronting the world’s worst conflict zones, including time in Myanmar. His reflections reveal both the evolution of his philosophy of protection and his frustration with the international system that repeatedly fails to uphold it.
Lilly says his understanding of “protection” began during his work early on with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). Though the organization is known for medical aid, he explains that its mission also included bearing witness and advocacy. Working in Afghanistan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, he documented sexual violence and helped transform patients’ stories into reports that pressure governments and the international community. He says, “We can’t just be there to assist people—we also need to be there to protect them, and then ultimately help bring about accountability.”
The situation in South Sudan, in particular, crystallized this understanding. When a civil war broke out there in 2013, he returned to the country as Senior Advisor on the Protection of Civilians for the UN peacekeeping mission. Within hours, civilians flooded UN bases seeking safety. At first, he believed that protection would be temporary, but as the number of displaced grew from 30,000 to more than 250,000, he realized that the camps would last for years. Initially, colleagues congratulated him because so many potential victims were being protected, but Lilly had a different sentiment, seeing it instead as a symptom of failure. The camps, he explains, became semi-permanent, exposing the limits of a system that shelters but cannot solve problems. For him, protection without accountability “really loses sight of what we’re trying to do.” He concludes that immediate safety must lead to long-term justice, or it only postpones the next atrocity. That conviction continues to guide his approach today.
Lilly elaborates on “protection” as both a legal and moral imperative. Rooted in the Geneva Conventions and humanitarian law, it originally referred to measures reinforcing respect for rights. Over time, he notes, the concept evolved to encompass dignity, safety, and social well-being, and is now understood to include violence prevention, responding to victims of violence, and pursuing justice for crimes committed. Lilly argues that these dimensions must function simultaneously. In Myanmar, he says, all three are desperately needed but remain fragmented.
His subsequent work as Chief of Protection at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees deepened his conviction that justice is key. He was charged with establishing a protection division for an agency already six decades old that served the population of Gaza. Over a period of six years during his term there, the Israeli military conducted three separate incursions into the territory, violating international law in the process. This highlighted for him how “if you don’t bring people justice, it festers resentment,” as he notes that this lack of accountability ended up just radicalizing a new generation of Palestinians. He emphasizes that the issue was not a lack of documentation—the region is one of the most documented on earth—but the failure to enforce existing laws, for which mechanisms do exist: the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, UN inquiries. Yet none really delivers results. Lilly says the challenge is not capacity, but will. States usually refuse to act even when the evidence is overwhelming.
Lilly then contrasts Gaza with the Congo, where a very complex situation played out differently. The UN was cooperating with the Congolese army in joint actions against a variety of armed groups causing problems in the country. At the same time, there were widespread charges of rape and even civilian massacres by the Congolese army. Lilly was charged with implementing a UN due-diligence policy linking continued support to the government’s willingness to prosecute the offending parties. As a result, some commanders were removed and cases brought to court. Lilly says this proved that legitimacy and accountability can coexist, even in fragile states. There just needs to be the political will, along with external pressures as needed. Myanmar’s military regime, unfortunately, “clearly has absolutely no willingness to bring anybody accountable to any of the crimes that its security forces are conducting.”
He recalls another formative experience. He was in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake, and he witnessed solidarity amid the terrible devastation. But fortunately, in this case, the Pakistani military led relief efforts with pride and urgency, supported by the UN. Again, the contrast with Myanmar could not be greater: When Cyclone Nargis struck in 2008, the junta actively prevented humanitarian aid from being delivered; ships loaded with food, medicine and emergency shelters had to sit offshore while thousands of Burmese died. The aid was allowed in only after extreme pressure from the outside by ASEAN and the UN, but by then the damage had been done. This same pattern was repeated during the recent catastrophic earthquake.
When his wife, also a UN employee, received a posting to Myanmar, Lilly and his family moved to Yangon. He expected relative calm there after years in conflict zones, since it was during the more open transition period. But within weeks, tanks were rolling through the streets. He watched from his apartment as protests erupted and were crushed.
As the days unfolded, the situation outside his window worsened. Streets once filled with families and teashops turned into battlegrounds patrolled by soldiers. From the safety of his apartment, he could hear the chants of protesters, then the crack of gunfire, and finally the eerie quiet that followed each crackdown. Amid the uncertainty, he reconnected with Chris Gunness, a former UN colleague and longtime Burma watcher, and the two began speaking almost daily about what could be done. At first they considered launching a human-rights monitoring effort to document abuses, but it quickly became clear that the real gap was not in reporting—it was in accountability. They began consulting with lawyers and advocacy groups in London and beyond, exploring every possible legal avenue to hold perpetrators to account.
In response, they co-founded the Myanmar Accountability Project (MAP) to pursue justice through legal means. The idea, he explains, was to move beyond human-rights reporting toward prosecutions. MAP’s strategy focuses on “universal jurisdiction,” which would allow any nation’s courts to try crimes against humanity wherever they occur. He says the decision came from listening to Myanmar activists who insisted that they did not want aid delivered through junta-controlled systems. They said, “What we want is justice!”
So, Lilly explains, that MAP searches for countries with both legal authority and political will to act. This includes Indonesia and the Philippines because he believes that regional leadership would lend legitimacy and may succeed where Western institutions fail, ignore the situation, or refuse to act. MAP also campaigns for sanctions, for recognition of the elected National Unity Government, and for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to expand its Myanmar jurisdiction. Combining legal cases with public advocacy gives the organization both moral clarity and practical reach. After years of frustration within the UN bureaucracy, he says, this focused approach feels like a return to purpose.
Lilly describes the legal maze that traps Myanmar’s situation in limbo. To this point, the ICC has investigated only the Rohingya genocide because its jurisdiction extends through Bangladesh, a signatory to the Rome Statute. It has not addressed crimes elsewhere in Myanmar because the junta is not signatory to the Rome Statute, and the court has been very reluctant to take an official stand as to whether the junta or the National Unity Government is the country’s legitimate authority. This frustrates Lilly, as he believes a precedent has been established regarding the legitimacy of NUG’s government: he and his colleagues argued before the UN Credentials Committee that the pre-coup’s elected government’s envoy should retain Myanmar’s seat and won—the committee deferred the junta’s representative and kept on the previous ambassador. Yet the ICC remains “quite conservative” and still declines to act. For Lilly, the stalemate exposes how international institutions cannot be counted on if legality intersects with politics.
The same dynamic paralyzes the UN Security Council, which still has not imposed a global arms embargo on Myanmar. Lilly, who once helped design sanctions regimes, says he is stunned at such egregious inaction. In past conflicts that have involved the massacre of civilians, the Council has readily agreed to stop the flow of weapons; in Myanmar, however, geopolitical rivalries make that impossible. In particular, China and Russia refuse to go along. “It’s a massive casualty of geopolitical dynamics,” he notes. Nonetheless, he credits targeted sanctions by the US, UK, and EU for curbing at least some of the flow of arms to the junta. He cities reports showing that pressure on suppliers like Singapore has had measurable effects. He adds that while sanctions alone will not end atrocities, they at least show that deterrence works when applied consistently.
Lilly’s deeper concern is the UN’s level of engagement with Myanmar. He points out that since the coup, the Secretary-General has not visited Myanmar, and the special envoy’s office remains underfunded. Lilly believes genuine political engagement requires both authority and strategy. “It’s not just about going through the motions,” he says. “It’s about saying we have a strategy, something specific to offer that is more than a small amount of humanitarian assistance.” Without such vision, he warns, the UN becomes a bystander to atrocity.
Moreover, he recalls the organization’s previous failures—like in Sri Lanka and during the Rohingya crisis—where agencies prioritized access and funding over principle, and in Myanmar, he sees the same pattern. Officials invoke neutrality to justify engagement with the junta, even posing for photographs that imply cooperation. “It sends a terrible, terrible message,” he says, arguing that such optics betray the victims. Many UN staff, he observes, focus more on maintaining presence than on defending rights. “You are about UN values!” he insists. “You should be upholding them!”
He argues that true neutrality is fidelity to humanitarian principles, not moral equivalence. Dialogue with the junta may sometimes be necessary to negotiate access or raise human-rights concerns, but it must never legitimize repression. The calculus, he explains, should always be what the people themselves view as legitimate— and in Myanmar “everyone is agreed about one thing: that the junta needs to go!” For him, this balance between engagement and principle defines the credibility of international action.
Lilly adds that the UN’s culture has shifted. Where Kofi Annan once traveled worldwide to mediate conflicts, today’s UN is largely risk averse. He believes that this lack of action breeds a vicious cycle of lost credibility, and points to bureaucratic inertia and financial crisis as hollowing out its ambition. Nevertheless, he is not totally pessimistic and insists more can be done; for example, it can empower local offices, expand advocacy, and support democratic forces instead of appeasing dictators.
Taking a step back beyond just the UN, Lilly notes that funding shortages have transformed the wider humanitarian system. After the Trump administration slashed US aid, global operations entered shrank, and barely any funding is allotted to the situation in Myanmar. Yet the shortage also forces innovation. Lilly believes the old model—foreign agencies importing aid into hostile states—is obsolete. The future, he argues, lies in localization, channeling resources through community organizations already active on the ground. He describes helping set up rapid-response mechanisms that rely on local partners rather than centralized structures. In Myanmar, he says, this is not just theory, but necessity: local groups are the only ones reaching those in need with aid.
Myanmar’s tragedy, he adds, is a test of the world’s commitment to universal norms. To defend accountability there is to defend the very idea of law in international relations. Lilly admits the obstacles are immense in this era of resurgent authoritarianism, but insists that persistence works. MAP’s work in regional jurisdictions, he says, shows that creative strategies can bypass global paralysis. Even as China and Russia shield the junta, there remain openings for justice.
Lilly recalls the early days of the coup, when protesters in Yangon wore shirts reading “Responsibility to Protect.” That slogan— once the emblem of global conscience— has nearly vanished; he acknowledges that the era of moral consensus has probably ended. But he rejects despair. Lilly believes principles must adapt to new realities. Even within transactional geopolitics, he argues, opportunities exist for principled engagement. He cites peace efforts in Congo— brokered partly for resource concessions— as examples where pragmatic diplomacy that can still yield results.
Despite the general darkness he describes, Lilly remains anchored in personal conviction. He remembers friends and colleagues in Myanmar who risked their lives protesting, and he says their courage sustains him. Bureaucracy, he warns, can numb compassion, but he strives to keep the human cost visible. “Unfortunately, many of the processes, certainly working in the UN, kind of drill it out of you,” he admits. Yet he continues to believe that international norms— however fragile —must be preserved. Justice may move slowly, but it does move.
As the conversation draws to a close, Lilly reflects on what sustains him after decades of witnessing atrocity. “It is a complex area,” he says, “something that requires dogged pursuit over the long term, but I think it is an important part of how we address many of these situations.” Despite all the despair and devastation that has been seen up to this point, he is still optimistic that better days are ahead. “I hope this looks toward a positive future for the country,” he concludes.