Reflecting on Bottom-up Peacebuilding Methodologies in Myanmar (Peace News)
Adapt Peacebuilding and the Relief Action Network for IDPs and Refugees (RANIR) have pioneered a civil society-led peacebuilding process in Myanmar, utilizing an adaptive peacebuilding methodology called Systemic Action Research (SAR). This approach allows local participants to determine the topics to be worked on, outcomes expected, who can participate, and when activities should be completed. The SAR approach has been implemented in the armed conflict in Myanmar’s north between the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and its allies and the Myanmar military. The SAR approach includes training in systemic inquiry, a process of participatory data collection and analysis. The process identified three priority peacebuilding topics: drug abuse, the right of return for refugees and internally displaced people, and social cohesion between host communities and internally displaced people. More than 17,000 people were directly involved in the process, and the potential of seeing peacebuilding as a process of social mobilization has been demonstrated.
SLIDE DECK: Systemic Conflict Assessment of Myanmar’s Kachin Conflict
These presentation slides include a systemic conflict assessment of Myanmar’s Kachin conflict. The analysis considers politics, identity, history, and natural resources and reflects a more optimistic time.
BLOG POST: Practical strategies for systems change in complex peacebuilding environments
This article argues that the distinctions we make in peacebuilding masks a messier, highly interdependent reality that we need to honestly engage with. We argue for a more holistic, systems view, and present three case studies of explicitly systemic peacebuilding strategies from Myanmar and Thailand. Reflection on these case studies offers insights for systemic theories of change, including engaging multiple parts of the system in parallel, rewiring relationships within the system, balancing adaptation and control, and building trust with donors to balance risk.
BLOG POST: Unpacking the complex causality so-called religious violence in Myanmar
A significant sub-system within the system relates to tensions between different religious and/or ethnic communities resulting from a lack of trust and positive interaction.
There are four important feedback loops which constitute this sub system. The first (R10) , is characterized by the fact that hate speech against Muslims (that employs stereotypes of Muslims as violent) reinforces the perception among non-Muslims that Islam is an inherently violent or aggressive religion. This perception in turn leads people to interpret social or inter-personal conflicts or crimes as religious conflicts (since they assume that Muslims are more likely to be aggressors and/or Islam to be incompatible with other religions). This contributes to the perception that religious conflict is rife, that Islam per se is the cause of the conflicts and/or that non-Muslims are at risk from attack by Muslims, which often results in hate speech against Muslims…
VIDEO: Peacemaking effectiveness: what can Myanmar learn from thirty years of international experience in peace process implementation
This work was produced and distributed ahead of the May 2017 national dialog process of Myanmar’s peace process. Based on international comparative evidence drawn from the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies Peace Accords Matrix, the animation addressed contemporary peacemaking challenges in Myanmar.
SLIDE DECK: Myanmar: Conflict, continuity and change, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, February 2018
This presentation, hosted by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, explores the current state of peacebuilding in Myanmar as it relates to the peace process, intercommunal violence in the country’s west, and the role of Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. It draws distinctions between the appearance of change and much deeper conservative forces of military and political power that maintain the status quo. Effective peacebuilding requires more attention to these deeper forces and their interaction with more visible political and conflict dynamics.
AUDIO: Myanmar and International Peacebuilding, with Stephen Gray
In this interview by Meredith Smith, Stephen Gray talks about recent work in Myanmar and his extensive experience in the conflict resolution field, sharing stories, insights and career advise for current students and aspiring peacebuilders.
BLOG POST: Can Myanmar’s peace process learn from international experience?
The 21st Century Panglong Conference represents an important milestone in Myanmar’s long march to peace. But it is only one step in a much longer process to end to the violence that has long limited this country’s great potential…The pathway forward is outlined in a framework for political dialog that has been negotiated following 2015’s Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement.
VIDEO: Animating continuity and change: hidden patterns in Myanmar and implications for aid
This animated video presents a systems mapping of Myanmar’s peace and reform process. The analysis demonstrates how invisible factors can generate unintended consequences when they interact with our own interventions, which typically are targeted at ‘problems’ that are most visible.
BLOG POST: Open Source your Analysis: Participatory Approaches to Systems Mapping
People living and working on complex systems, which is pretty much all of us, find ourselves baffled and inspired in equal measures by their unpredictable behavior. Complex systems, be they storm systems (environmental), the endocrine system (biological), or the dancefloor at your office Christmas party (social), can be impossible to predict, let alone control. As thinkers such as Easterly and Taleb argue, we should treat with great scepticism anyone who tells you that they can.
