Women Peace And Security In Myanmar

This book describes women’s efforts as agents for change in Myanmar and examines the potential of the peace process as an opportunity for women’s empowerment. Following decades of political turbulence, the volume describes the contributions of women in Myanmar in the midst of a difficult peace process and reflects on the significance of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in this context. The book examines how women have mobilized for peace, while also addressing women’s participation in the conflict, and investigates the perspectives and aims of women’s organizations and the challenges and aspirations of women activists in Myanmar’s ethnic areas. Contributions in the volume discuss and critically assess the argument that war and peacebuilding add momentum to the transformation of gender roles. By presenting new knowledge on women’s disempowerment and empowerment in conflict, and their participation in peacebuilding, this book adds important insights into the debate on gender and political change in societies affected by conflict. This book will be of interest to students of peace and conflict studies, gender studies and security studies in general.

This book explores the role of nongovernmental mediators in promoting “inclusive peace” to negotiating parties in Myanmar’s Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) negotiations from 2011-2015. The influx of NGO mediators directly engaging with the negotiating parties and promoting the inclusivity norm coupled with the salience of discourse around “all-inclusiveness” at the end of the NCA process forms a puzzle around the agency that NGO mediators wield in influencing political outcomes, despite their lack of political and material leverage.The author argues that NGO mediators can effectively promote norms, using mediation processes as a site of norm diffusion. Bespoke international conflict resolution NGOs have become key mediation actors, within the last three decades through creating the niche world of “private diplomacy” and acting as "norm entrepreneurs" at the same time. As informal third parties, these NGO mediators directly engage with politically sensitive actors or convene unofficial peace talks. As NGOs, they are part of an epistemic community of mediation practice, professionalizing the field and producing knowledge on what peace mediation is and what it ought to be. This dual identity as both NGOs and mediators nicely sets them up with a unique agency to promote and diffuse norms. These norms often reflect the liberal peacebuilding paradigm promoted from the Global North, such as inclusion, gender equality and transitional justice, with the view that these norms are not ends in themselves but as necessary ingredients for effective mediation.The book further questions whether NGOs should promote norms in the first place. The outcome of the NCA process presents a critical and cautionary tale of promoting a presumed universal norm into a given locale and expecting a certain outcome without understanding how an external norm interacts with existing normative frameworks. The book illustrates that while NGO mediators do possess the “normative agency” to effectively promote norms to negotiating parties, my empirical research analyses how their promotion of the “inclusivity” norm to the negotiating parties in Myanmar’s NCA paradoxically resulted in exclusionary outcomes: only half of the armed groups in the ethnic armed groups’ negotiating bloc signed, and civil society was effectively crowded out from meaningful participation despite lofty rhetoric. This is an open access book.

An international legal analysis of the UN Security Council's agenda on Women, Peace and Security (WPS).

Gender is increasingly recognized as central to the study and analysis of the traditionally male domains of war and international relations. The book explores the key role of gender in peace research, conflict resolution and international politics. Rather than simply add gender and stir the aim is to transcend different disciplinary boundaries and conceptual approaches to provide a more integrated basis for research and study. To this end Gender, Peace & Conflict uniquely combines theoretical chapters alongside empirical case studies, to demonstrate the importance of a gender perspective to both theory and practice in conflict resolution and peace research.

Advances the critical dialogue on the importance of women in international peace and security. Points out the importance of women in building and keeping peace. Brings together diverse voices from diplomats to military officials and from human rights activists to development professionals. "

Passed in 2000, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and subsequent seven Resolutions make up the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. This agenda is a significant international normative and policy framework addressing the gender-specific impacts of conflict on women and girls, including protection against sexual and gender-based violence, promotion of women's participation in peace and security processes, and support for women's roles as peace builders in the prevention of conflict and rebuilding of societies after conflict. Implementation within and across states and international organizations - and within peace and security operations - has been slow despite significant transnational advocacy in support of the WPS agenda. The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security brings together scholars, advocates, and policymakers to provide an overview of what we know concerning what works to promote women's participation in peace and security, what works to protect women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence and other human rights violations, and what works to prevent conflict drawing on women's experiences and knowledge of building peace from local to global levels. Just as importantly, it addresses the gaps in knowledge on and the future direction of scholarship on WPS. The handbook particularly aims to build on the findings from the 2015 Global Study of Resolution 1325, commissioned by the UN-Secretary General. Over the course of six sections, the handbook addresses the concepts and early history behind WPS; the theory and practice of WPS; international institutions involved with the WPS agenda; the implementation of WPS in conflict prevention, peace operations, peace building, arms control, human-rights protection, and protection of civilians; connections between WPS and other UN resolutions and agendas; and the ongoing and future challenges of WPS.

This book offers the assessment of Myanmar’s societal changes, development aspects, and political situation over the course of the nation’s short lived democratic transition disrupted by the coup d’état on 1 February 2021. A multitude of authors with different expertise add new dimensions of analysis to provide a foundation for any future international cooperation in Myanmar’s center and peripheries. The military’s institutionalization of its influence and control in political, economic and social affairs has negatively affected the safety, security and peace of people and their communities at the periphery. This in turn has led the people to undertake local grassroots initiatives towards securing a genuine democratic transition at the local and national level. The chapters probe into Myanmar’s transition and political crisis through in-depth discussion on the issues such as, but not limited to, state fragility, community resilience, political leadership, ethnic women’s organizations, human security, education equality, IDPs and non-state actors, ethnic community-based health organizations, the 2020 election, peace process, development issues, the coup’s destruction, and a new-born unity. The book covers an important collection of inputs from young and prominent scholars alike, offering a valuable resource for general readers, students, and practitioners. The editors present this volume as a vital collection to literature at a time of heated political crisis and societal responses on her current course since the contributors highlight the state of Myanmar by also focusing on the margins, the grassroots, and the recent coup.