Uniting
Research and Policy

Aung Htet Moe is an MPP student at the Harris School of Public Policy. His research interests include Peace-building and economic development, Decentralization and Local Governance, Social Protection, and Human Capital Development.

Before joining Harris, Aung graduated with a Master of Public Administration from Northern Illinois University, where he worked as a graduate research assistant at the Center for Burma Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. He also worked with various international development organizations on social and economic development programs, from Civic Education, Social Protection, and Internal Migration to the Myanmar Peace Process.

Aung started working professionally at the beginning of Myanmar's dramatic democratic transaction for the Civic Education Program in 2015. He played a pivotal role in the success of the country's 1st free and fair election since 1962, providing Voter Education awareness. After the peaceful transfer of power to the democratically elected government led by Nobel Peace Prize Literature Aung San Suu Kyi, the country started to transform outdated social and economic sectors with the assistance of the International Development Fund. He continued working as a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) officer for the social protection pilot policy program and internal migration program. At the same time, the country moved to a new phase of economic and social development after the election.

One of the experiences was working for the Myanmar Peace Process with UNFPA and Ethnic Armed Organizations, where all the challenges to emerging a federal republic lay. Those engagements in the Burma historic state-building process were hopeful until Burma's oppressive military staged a coup in 2021. 

The 2020 U.S. presidential election was held on November 3, 2020, and the Myanmar general elections were held on November 8, 2020. Less than a month after January 6, 2021, which is primarily associated with the U.S. Capitol riot, it did have indirect implications for the situation in Burma, particularly in how authoritarian regime perceptions of democracy and governance were being framed at the time.

On February 1, 2021, the Myanmar military seized power, detaining civilian leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi and other key members of the National League for Democracy (NLD). The military justified the coup by alleging widespread electoral fraud in the November 2020 elections, in which the NLD won a landslide victory.