Draft:May Oo Mutraw

Submission declined on 10 November 2026 by Htanaungg (talk). This draft is not adequately supported by reliable sources. Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires that all content be supported by reliable sources. Reliable sources include: reputable newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and books from respected publishers. Unacceptable sources include: personal blogs, social media, predatory publishers, most tabloids, and websites where anyone can contribute. Replace any unreliable sources with high-quality sources. If you cannot find a reliable source for the material, it should be removed. If you would like to continue working on the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. If you have not resolved the issues listed above, your draft will be declined again and potentially deleted. If you need extra help, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. Please do not remove reviewer comments or this notice until the submission is accepted. Where to get help If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews. If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed. How to improve a draft Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia. Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article Wikipedia:Verifiability – make sure your article includes reliable third-party sources You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Add tags to your draft Editor resources Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs Declined by Htanaungg 4 days ago. Last edited by PSeonKyaw 3 days ago. Reviewer: Inform author. Resubmit Please note that if the issues are not fixed, the draft will be declined again.

Submission declined on 8 November 2026 by Htanaungg (talk). This draft is not adequately supported by reliable sources. Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires that all content be supported by reliable sources. Reliable sources include: reputable newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and books from respected publishers. Unacceptable sources include: personal blogs, social media, predatory publishers, most tabloids, and websites where anyone can contribute. Replace any unreliable sources with high-quality sources. If you cannot find a reliable source for the material, it should be removed. This draft's references do not show that the person meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion for people. The draft requires multiple published secondary sources that: provide significant coverage: discuss the person in detail, not brief mentions or interviews lacking independent analysis and are reliable: from reputable outlets with editorial oversight and are independent: not connected to the person, such as interviews, press releases, the subject's own website, or sponsored content. Please add references that meet all three of these criteria. If none exist, the subject is not yet suitable for Wikipedia. Declined by Htanaungg 6 days ago.

• Comment: Unfortunately, the three Irrawaddy sources provide only passing mentions of her in her capacity as a KNU spokesperson. The Al Jazeera article includes an interview with her, but its focus is on the KNU rather than on her, so I would not count it as significant coverage of the subject either. The World article appears acceptable at this stage. The 2012 VOA report is also a stronger source and may help establish her notability, as she is prominently featured in its women’s section. However, I remain uncertain whether it provides substantial coverage of her personally or primarily reports on negotiations between the KNU and the Burmese government. Htanaungg (talk) 05:51, 10 November 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: In preparing this draft, I disclose that AI assistance was used as follows: same as before PSeonKyaw (talk) 21:22, 8 November 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: Thanks for the review. I've reworked the draft to address both points:
  • Independent coverage of her now cited: Patrick Winn's GlobalPost profile (republished by The World); The Irrawaddy (Simon Roughneen, 4 May 2012; Saw Yan Naing, 4 Sep 2012); a June 2012 Irrawaddy Burmese feature by Khin Oo Thar on women's leadership in the peace process, which discusses her role; a VOA Burmese segment from April 2012 on her role as KNU delegation spokesperson; Karen News and Al Jazeera on the 2012 talks; and a 2019 One News television interview by Htet Aung Kyaw.
  • Self-published, organisational and speaker-bio sources are now used only for basic facts, and the claims that rely on her own biographies are attributed as such.
  • Removed the press-release, SCEF background and CV-style list material, and fixed two facts (1988 coup, not the uprising; the school was run by the Karen Revolution). COI disclosed on the talk page and my user page. PSeonKyaw (talk) 21:17, 8 November 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: Tea Circle Myanmar, Nobel Women's Initiative, and FORSEA provide some coverage of the subject, but the cited material consists mainly of speaker biographies, an organisational profile, and the subject’s own writing, rather than independent reporting about her. Not clearly established significant coverage in independent secondary sources. Htanaungg (talk) 01:45, 8 November 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: In preparing this draft, I disclose that AI assistance was used as follows: The draft was written with help from AI (ChatGPT), then reviewed and fact-checked by the people involved, including the subject, May Oo Mutraw, herself. I don't have the chat transcript. PSeonKyaw (talk) 03:40, 7 November 2026 (UTC)

May Oo Mutraw
မေဦးမူတြော်
May Oo Mutraw in 2020
Other names	Naw May Oo, May-Oo Mutraw
Alma mater	San Francisco State University Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Occupation	Political adviser
Known for	Spokesperson of the Karen National Union delegation in the 2012 ceasefire talks

Naw May Oo Mutraw (also known as Naw May Oo; also spelled May-Oo Mutraw) is a Karen political adviser and women's rights advocate from Myanmar (Burma). In 2012 she was a negotiator and spokesperson for the Karen National Union (KNU) delegation in its ceasefire talks with the Myanmar government, and she has since served as an adviser to the KNU.^[1][2] Her work focuses on federalism, constitutional reform and women's participation in politics and peace processes.^[3][4]

Mutraw is Karen and comes from Toungoo in Burma. In 1988, after the military coup, she fled Toungoo with her family to a refugee camp in Thailand near the Thai–Burmese border.^[5][6] She later finished high school at a school run by the Karen Revolution in an area outside central government control.^[5] She has said that she once dreamed of becoming a civil engineer and building roads.^[7]

She emigrated with her family to the United States,^[6] where she earned a bachelor's degree in speech communication from San Francisco State University and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law.^[6][2][8] She began doctoral studies in constitutional law and federalism at the same school, writing a dissertation on constitutional design for post-conflict states with Burma as its case.^[2] She was also a Snyder International Law Research Scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge.^[2][4]

While in the United States, Mutraw took part in the Burmese democracy movement. She served as the first Women's Affairs Coordinator of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, a government in exile formed after the 1990 general election.^[9]

In 2003 she accompanied the American filmmaker Holly Fisher into Karen State; footage from the journey was used in Fisher's documentary Deafening Silence.^[10][11]

In 2007 she co-founded the Going Home Where We Belong Program, which connects Karen and Karenni refugees educated abroad with communities in Burma. She also designed and taught courses in local governance, public policy, democracy and human rights for KNU leaders at brigade and district level.^[5] In 2009 she and Neineh Plo produced a short documentary about the program, Going Home Where We Belong, and she published a photographic book, Stories of Resilience and Hope: Reflecting on War, Ethnicity, and Liberation Struggle in Burma.^[12][5]

In March 2010 she took part in the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women of Burma, organised by the Nobel Women's Initiative and the Women's League of Burma.^[5][13]

She co-founded the Burmese Community Center for Education in Indianapolis, which supports Burmese refugee families.^[14][15]

In 2012 Mutraw joined the KNU's negotiation team in its talks with President Thein Sein's government; according to her published biographies, she returned to Burma that year to take part in the peace process.^[2][9] She was a member of the 16-person KNU delegation led by Naw Zipporah Sein for the second round of talks in April 2012 and served as the delegation's spokesperson.^[16][17][18] The Irrawaddy described her as a KNU negotiator and spokesperson, and GlobalPost as one of the negotiation team's top members.^[1][6] A June 2012 Irrawaddy feature on women's leadership in the peace process described her leading role for the KNU at the talks in Yangon.^[8]

She spoke for the KNU during the talks on a troop code of conduct, civilian protection and the repositioning of government troops. In September 2012 she announced that the two sides had agreed and signed a second draft of the code of conduct in Pa-an.^[19][20]

Mutraw has continued to work as an adviser to the KNU and as a senior policy adviser at the Salween Institute for Public Policy.^[2][4][21] In a 2019 television interview with Htet Aung Kyaw of One News, she was introduced as a KNU adviser and discussed the KNU's talks with the government's peace commission.^[22][23]

In 2016 she was quoted on the barriers that limit women's participation in Myanmar's peace process.^[3] After the 2021 military coup she spoke at academic conferences and policy forums on Myanmar's constitutional crisis, the role of the armed forces and federal democratic institutions.^[24][9] In 2023 she gave a talk on gender equality and women's rights in a federal constitution and spoke at an International Crisis Group panel on rebel governance.^[2][25] In 2024 she wrote an essay calling on the National Unity Government and ethnic revolutionary organisations to practise gender and ethnic equality, and presented on federal principles at the Fourth International Conference on Burma/Myanmar Studies in Chiang Mai.^[26][27]

In 2026 ISP-Myanmar published her essays on women's representation in the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union and on women's political solidarity.^[28][29] In August 2026 she spoke at the Fifth International Conference on Burma/Myanmar Studies at Chiang Mai University.^[30][31]

In 2021 she was named a Woman PeaceMaker by the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego.^[32]

• Stories of Resilience and Hope: Reflecting on War, Ethnicity, and Liberation Struggle in Burma (Blurb, 2009), photographic book
• Going Home Where We Belong (2009), short documentary, with Neineh Plo
• "Myanmar NUG and Ethnic Revolutionary Organizations need to walk their talk of gender – and ethnic – equality", FORSEA, 2024
• "Making the Women's Pillar a Real Thing in the SCEF", ISP-Myanmar, 2026
• "Women Coming Together as Women – A Case for Solidarity Without Sameness", ISP-Myanmar, 2026

• ISP-Myanmar contributor page (in Burmese)