The Shwe Gas Movement (SGM) campaigns for improved human rights, property rights and government responsibility in the Shwe Gas Project, a massive extraction and export project by the government of Myanmar. With support from RWI, SGM has worked to attain concrete transparency and accountability commitments from the government andits foreign partners in the project. The coalition has met with civil society organizations (CSOs), companies and government representatives in several Asia-Pacific countries to develop advocacy strategies to exert diplomatic pressure on the Myanmar government. Inside Myanmar, SGM produced and disseminated materials to local communities, media outlets and CSOs, produced policy recommendations for political party representatives, and trained fact-finders to document any human rights abuse or environmental degradation resulting from the project.

The Shwe Gas Project—launched by Myanmar’s military government in 2009—is expected to become the government’s single largest source of foreign revenue, through the extraction and export of natural gas to China. Local populations were not permitted to participate in decision-making around the Shwe pipeline’s construction, and since it began they have been subject to human rights abuses, land confiscation and forced relocation. 

SGM is a coalition of Thailand-based activists and three organizations based in exile that was born as a resistance movement against the Shwe Gas Project.