Women's Participation in Myanmar's Peace Process

Aug 8, 2019 | Akanksha Khullar
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For years, women in Myanmar have been powerful advocates for comprehensive peace and good governance, calling for reconciliation and democratic transition; demanding legislations that protect women’s rights; and leading civil society initiatives for reform. Yet, as Myanmar chugs forward with its ongoing peace process with the numerous Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAO) operating in the country, women’s meaningful inclusion in this mammoth exercise is yet to become substantial and comprehensive.

For instance, women-led and focused organisations have been conducting mass advocacy campaigns to secure women’s representation and involvement in the process by means of a 30 per cent reservation for women at different levels of political dialogue and peace negotiations. This demand not only arises from the need for affirmative action to facilitate women’s participation in the process, but is also in line with the country’s obligation as a signatory to the Convention to End Discrimination against Women. Nonetheless, these demands were neither included in the initial 2011 peace negotiations nor in the landmark peace accord—Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA)—signed between Naypyidaw and eight EAOs in October 2015. In fact, the text of NCA simply calls for the inclusion of a “reasonable number of women representatives in the political dialogue process.”

The effect of this ambiguity is palpable. In January 2016, only 2 women served on the 48-memberUnion Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC)—the leadership body of the Union Peace Conference (UPC); and women comprised merely 7 per cent of the 700 participants at the UPC when it first convened. However, by the end of January 2016 UPC, pressure from civil society organizations (CSOs) to remedy this severe under-representation of women resulted in the decision to “strive to achieve 30 percent women’s participation in political dialogue.”