"With the ?opening up” of Myanmar in 2011 after decades of repressive military rule, domestic civil society organizations, international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and aid organizations, have been eager to increase their activities inside the country. Corresponding with this ramp up, a remarkable occurrence unfolded between the summers of 2013 and 2014: the nation?s formerly authoritarian government opened its doors to a rigorous debate on the state of civil society in Myanmar and abandoned a restrictive law in place since the infamous 1988 crackdown. In recent decades Myanmar has enacted and carried out among the most draconian and repressive policies toward civil society organizations in the world. In this light, the fact that it allowed a representative body of 275 such organizations to air their criticisms of a recently passed law is virtually without precedent. Perhaps more remarkably, the government then revised the proposed 2013 law in response to these criticisms, and subsequently published the final version of the Association Registration Law in July 2014 thereby fundamentally altering the people?s right to freely associate..."