Myanmar ceasefire agreement and peace process happened in 2012, after the President U Thein Sein called to all ethnic armed resistant groups in dealing bi-literal talks. A minister in U Thein Sein’s cabinet, U Aung Min, led the negotiation mission, and met many groups of ethnic armed organizations and their political and military leaders. U Aung Min’s peace mission could deal and agree for bi-lateral agreements on ceasefire. In southern Burma/Myanmar, New Mon State Party (NMSP) signed bi-literal ceasefire agreements in February 2012, and the Karen main armed group, Karen National Union (KNU) signed in March 2012 respectively. Other bi-literal ceasefire agreements were signed with Shan, Karenni, Shan and Chin ethnic armed groups in their own respective areas. Bi-literal ceasefire ceased almost many areas of ethnic States and some Divisions.
There are plenty of benefits from bi-literal agreement to ethnic civilians in the areas concerned.
- Human rights violations have been decreased.
- The ethnic civilians could engage in daily life activities, farming and other livelihoods
- Trading and marketing expended from the post ceasefire areas to other areas
- The displaced communities in the ethnic regions could get more access to community development
President U Thein Sein continuously called these EAOs, those signed bi-literal agreement, to sign Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA). On October 15, 2015, before he stepped down from power, President U Thein could sign NCA with 7 ethnic armed groups and one student armed group, ABSDF.
In 2016, the new National League for Democracy (NLD) came to power and held four times of peace conference in the name of 21st Century Panglong Conference. There have been all peace shareholders involved in peace conference accordingly to political dialogue framework. In these conferences, they agreed on Union Accords, which was fundamental agreement to establish Federal Agreement.
The objectives of this Project are:
- Analyse the previous Peace Conference in Burma/Myanmar, and Union Accords, and the implementations of these agreements.
- Analyse the peace dialogues and peace-building processes in other countries around the world and research the outcomes of these peace-building processes
Provide recommendations and analysis on peace-building to the peace stakeholders concerned.
