The State Peace and Development Council (Burmese: နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ [nàɪɰ̃ŋàɰ̃dɔ̀ ʔédʑáɰ̃θàjajé n̥ḭɰ̃ pʰʊ̰ɰ̃bjó jé kaʊ̀ɰ̃sì]; abbreviated SPDC or နအဖ, [na̰ʔa̰pʰa̰]) was the official name of the military government of Burma (Myanmar) which, in 1997, succeeded the State Law and Order Restoration Council (Burmese: နိုင်ငံတော် ငြိမ်ဝပ်ပိပြားမှု တည်ဆောက်ရေးအဖွဲ့; abbreviated SLORC or နဝတ) that had seized power under the rule of Saw Maung in 1988.

[10] The council was officially dissolved on 30 March 2011, with the inauguration of the newly elected government, led by its former member and Prime Minister, President Thein Sein.

The SLORC also stated that the services of the Deputy Ministers in the previous Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) government which it replaced were also terminated.

Reports by these organisations as well as the United Nations and the Karen Human Rights Group alleged gross human rights abuses that took place in Burma under their regime, including: One of the worst atrocities in Burma took place during the uprising of August 1988, when millions of Burmese marched throughout the country calling for an end to military rule.

Under the SPDC, the Burmese army engaged in military offensives against ethnic minority populations, committing acts that violated international humanitarian law.

[citation needed] The UN Secretary-General named the SPDC in four consecutive reports for violating international standards prohibiting the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

[17] Human Rights Watch reported[18] that since Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, the Burmese authorities expelled hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced persons from schools, monasteries, and public buildings, and encouraged them to return to their destroyed villages in the Irrawaddy Delta.

The SPDC was alleged to have evicted people from dozens of government-operated tented relief camps in the vicinity of the former capital Yangon, ordering the residents to return to their homes, regardless of the conditions they face.

The forced evictions were part of government efforts to demonstrate that the emergency relief period was over and that the affected population were capable of rebuilding their lives without foreign aid.

[20] Even before the large-scale demonstrations began in August 2007, the authorities arrested many well-known opponents of the government on political grounds, several of whom had only been released from prison several months earlier.