SAFN Press Release

15th July 2024, Washington DC. The South Asia Foresight Network SAFN in Washington DC and the  Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies (MISIS) in Myanmar entered into a Working Protocol for research collaboration and exchange.  

MISIS is the first think tank in Myanmar, established in July 1992. It serves as a think tank for foreign policy research and provides recommendations to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Working Protocol will enable joint research in Myanmar and the regions of Southeast Asia and South Asia, where the SAFN network will conduct in-depth research on foreign policy, security, and Futures Research. Further, the partnership will bridge Southeast Asia and Washington, D.C., to better understand the existing and emerging geopolitical trends and challenges in the Indo-Pacific. 

In his opening remarks, H.E. Mr. Thant Kyaw, Chairman of the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies (MISIS), said, “The working protocol will strengthen mutual trust and enable the exchange of important research data between MISIS and SAFN.”

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, the Executive Director of SAFN, said, “Myanmar has an extraordinary geopolitical value. Myanmar sits between China and India and faces the Indian Ocean. Myanmar faces high geopolitics, and there are many concerns – from the ethnic conflict, climate change, and economic situation to many critical areas; the collaboration opens many opportunities for SAFN-MISIS Researchers”. Millennium Project co-founder/CEO Jerome C.Glenn explained “the importance of synergetic relations among nation than zero-sum power politics, and SAFN researchers have already embarked on finding synergetic relations strategies among South Asian nations”.

The signing ceremony of the protocol was attended by Mr. Thet Win Chargé d’Affaires/ Minister
Embassy of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar in Washington, D.C. and senior diplomats and scholars .