Sustainable Peace in Myanmar

A national ceasefire agreement is close to being reached in Myanmar, thereby ending 65 years of armed conflict in the resource-rich borderlands. Here numerous ethnic non-state armed groups have contested the Burmese army and the central government in pursuit of self-determination.

This policy brief discusses the contested peacebuilding process in Myanmar. It argues that to build trust in the peace process and to secure sustainable peace there is an acute need to begin to discuss, at a very concrete level, the livelihood options and the political possibilities for the armed actors in a peaceful Myanmar. So far peace negotiations have focused on the leadership of the ethnic groups can get out of a political settlement. Little attention is given to the low- and middle-ranked armed actors. The risk is that these actors feel forgotten and at worst turn into autonomous spheres of violence and predation and/or cause future mobilization. The brief proposes a combination of military, political and economic integration options for the armed actors. It also cautions against the rolling out of government-led development interventions in the conflict-affected areas without due consideration of the political consequences these can have for the peace process.