ABSTRACT This article examines the formation and operation of Myanmar's Interim Ethics Review Board (IERB), which was established in November 2023 by displaced academics involved in the Civil Disobedience Movement against the 2021 military coup. Operating within a highly repressive, conflict‐ridden environment, the IERB exemplifies a locally‐led and context‐specific model for ethical oversight, which was designed to address challenges created by a context of extreme authoritarianism and political instability. Using qualitative case study methods and autoethnography, the article analyses how IERB members navigate security threats, political persecution and ethical dilemmas. In so doing, the analysis identifies four key trade‐offs—anonymity versus transparency, legitimacy versus independence, efficiency versus volunteerism and scientific rigour versus flexible and humanised approaches—that shape ethical decision‐making in this context of authoritarianism and conflict, and that are not typically acknowledged in literature on institutionalised ethics mechanisms. The article then describes how, to navigate these trade‐offs, the IERB has developed an innovative approach grounded in ‘scientific resistance’ and based on key foundations of trust‐based, localised and humanised research ethics. This model emphasises principles of anonymity, independence, volunteerism and flexible and human‐centred practises; and it acknowledges that trade‐offs can be necessary to uphold ethical integrity amidst repression and conflict.
Zaw et al. (Thu,) studied this question.