Why was this question on why Myanmar got removed from the list of countries on the international driving permit put on hold?

Question

Why was this question Why did Myanmar get removed from the list of countries on the international driving permit issued by the AAA sometime between 2016 and 2019? on hold?

Knowing the reason(s) why Myanmar got removed from the list of countries on the international driving permit is probably useful for travelers. For example, if the reason is that nowadays it is illegal or that it is too dangerous for a foreigner to drive by themselves in Myanmar, then it's good to know.

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In case the question gets removed, here is a copy of it:

Why did Myanmar get removed from the list of countries on the international driving permit issued by the American Automobile Association (AAA)?

Myanmar used to be in 2016-issued international driving permits but it's not on international driving permits currently issued (2019-10-14).

Here is the list of countries in international driving permits currently issued (2019-10-14):

Here is the list of countries in international driving permits issued in 2016: Myanmar is present in the list.

According to the first page of the international driving permit this is the list of the "contracting States:

The AAA online application form for the international driving permit still mentions Myanmar: https://web.archive.org/web/20191015015350/https://www.aaa.com/vacation/application2a.pdf

Answer 1

As the first to vote to close, I’ll explain my reasons here.

Fundamentally, I just don’t believe that why Myanmar doesn’t accept IDPs is a travel question as defined by the site’s rules.

If you’d asked whether Myanmar accepts IDPs, it would be a different matter. That is clearly a question with relevance to planning a trip - if you want to drive, you need to know whether your IDP is accepted there. But if you already know that it isn’t, knowing the reason that it isn’t accepted isn’t useful information for planning your trip.

I raised this in the comments and you responded that the reason might be useful if it were, for example, that foreigners are no longer allowed to drive there. Which is true, if that happens to be the answer, but only because in that case the answer by coincidence happens to be the same as that to “are foreigners allowed to drive in Myanmar? If so, which documents do they need?”. As I pointed out in the comments more than once, if that is the type of information you want, that is the question you should be asking.

Other plausible answers to your question could be “the Myanmar equivalent of the DVLA changed their policies”, “international treaty x expired last year”, etc., which may be interesting but don’t tell you anything useful for planning your trip.

Put it this way: “is my Ethiopian driving license valid in Germany?” is a travel question. Is “why doesn’t Germany accept my Ethiopian driving license?”* an on-topic travel question? To my mind it’s clearly not (rather it seems to be a law/policy question), and your question is fundamentally the same.

* Ethiopia chosen essentially at random for the sake of an example, I neither know nor care whether Ethiopian driving licenses are accepted in Germany.

Answer 2

I fully agree - IDPs are exclusively used for international travel, so they should almost always be on topic on Travel.SE. Feel free to ping one of the mods in chat in the future if you feel that your question has been unfairly closed :)