The actual negotiations under the Nationwide Cease Fire Agreement between the government, Tatmadaw and Ethnic Armed Organisations; women’s inclusion in the peace process; and an experience of participation by the ethnic minorities on the social, political and economic matters are just some examples. Another less formal factor relates to the experience of discrimination and harassment based on religious identity.
According to analysts and many national Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Myanmar, divisions between different religious groups are currently being exacerbated and deepened. Many of these actors further claim that this is done intentionally by stakeholders to the armed civil conflicts, who use polarization of people as a weapon to fuel the conflict; the conflict then creates a demand for tighter security measures and presence of armed groups.
A recent example of a comment and protest against persecution and structural discrimination against Muslims to practice their faith is the letter signed by several national CSOs and INGOs part of the Burma Human Rights Network http://progressivevoicemyanmar.org/2017/08/03/burma-human-rights-network-open-letter-to-state-counsellor-daw-aung-san-suu-kyi/ .
However, the cause of conflict that is mentioned perhaps most frequently by people in Myanmar – by both peacebuilders and lay people – is the influence of business interests on the conflict. In short: after decades of armed conflict in the border areas, the environment in many places is conducive for extra-legal transactions and business to take place in the shadows, far from scrutiny of the police or tax authorities.
In Myanmar, this has been studied by several scholars, who have observed that the control over natural resources such as jade, teak, opium (and meth) and trafficking of people to mention a few can be a very lucrative asset. The anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom has written extensively about the phenomenon of extra-legal networks that fuels war and international profiteering in her book Shadows of War (2004).Nordstrom builds her analysis on field work done in Mozambique, Angola and Sri Lanka and shows how businesspeople and other actors with power can earn significant wealth on a conflict that remains in stalemate.
Because it is easy to earn big money if there is no authority to regulate the market, manage natural resources, and control taxation, some actors will profit from selling natural resources and flying in goods that are otherwise unavailable. Nordstrom does not provide any specific recommendations regarding how to prevent or handle the phenomenon of shadow economies that continue to fuel conflicts. But she concludes that it is crucial to understand the power relations and international connections that often are involved in continuing armed conflicts, through the delivery of desired commodities and exploitation of natural resources in an extrajudicial way.
One measure that might effectively decrease extra-legal businesses happening in the shadows in war zones is to build the capacity of civil society actors to hold commercial companies and public authorities accountable on business matters. Human rights must be accepted and illegal exploitation and smuggling of natural resources must be hampered. It must become painful and expensive for commercial companies to violate the laws when it comes to land confiscation, mining or dam projects.
This aligns with the initiative that the ACT Alliance members Church of Sweden (CoS) and ICCO Cooperation is undertaking together with ALTSEAN in 2017. Capacity building of Myanmar Civil Society Organisations is being done on how to work with Business and Human Rights so that they can become better equipped to hold private and public stakeholders accountable to the legal frameworks that Myanmar is a party to, including the UN Guiding Principles on Human Rights and other human rights obligations. The first step is a workshop in Yangon. After that mini-projects will be developed and followed up during the next six months, and then a final follow-up training will be conducted by the end of the year.
Together we hope that this will also be an important piece in the puzzle of various approaches that is needed to contribute to peace building in Myanmar. Working with this kind of rights-based approach may carry risks for the CSOs involved and therefore there are modules in the trainings that deal with how security management and risk prevention can be an integrated part in this work. But attention and awareness by the international community to the issues of Business and human rights and how it connects to international commercial companies beyond the national Myanmar arena is also crucial.
Mikael Wiking – Liaison officer, Church of Sweden’s International Department