May Sabe Phyu is the Director of the Gender Equality Network (GEN), a coalition of more than 100 organizations collaborating to advocate for women’s rights to end discrimination against women and ethnic and religious minorities in Myanmar. She works actively in the areas of the prevention of violence against women, law reform and women’s engagement to bring peace. She also co-founded the Kachin Peace Network (KPN) and Kachin Women Peace Network (KWPN) to raise awareness of the human cost of conflict and to advocate for peace and reconciliation.
She is one of the founding members of the Alliance for Gender Inclusion for Peace Process (AGIPP) for promoting women’s meaningful participation in Myanmar’s peace process and serving as active steering committee member. Less than 48 hours after the coup, many women’s groups organized themselves to form a Women’s Human Rights Defenders network to collective counter the country’s urgent state of affairs. That network has transformed itself into a coalition and now standing as one of the independent voices for the plight of women and girls in Myanmar, advocating to power-holders and policy makers so humanitarian efforts will be gendered and reached to the most affected communities, and addressing the gendered needs arising from this failed coup. She is actively coordinating the coliation and continue to advocate for inclusion of women, peace and security agenda in Spring Revolution. As the recognition of her work, she was honored by many international awards including “International Women of Courage” Award by the United States in 2015, and “Frenco-German Human Rights and Rule of Law Prize” by the German and France in 2021. She is a Dorothea S. Clarke fellow with Cornell Law School relocated to the United States after the Myanmar military seized power in 2021.
