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Strife Series: Colonial Legacies – How has the colonial past of Myanmar influenced the attitude of the ruling elites today with regard to the coup and ongoing genocide?

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Protest in Myanmar against Military Coup 14-Feb-2021. Source: Wikipedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons.

The targeting of the Rohingya communities in Myanmar today is nothing short of a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’ [1]. To this day, 900,000 Rohingya refugees have sought shelter in the neighbouring state of Bangladesh [2], driven out by military-led attacks in the Northern Rakhine State. This is a surprising fact considering the supposed ‘democratic’ nature of Aung Sung Suu Kyi’s government. Furthermore, given the country’s announcement of its intention to transition from an authoritarian state (controlled by the military, the Tatmadaw) to a democratic one in 2011, how can we understand this obvious abuse of power?

At present, there are two key narratives which can explain why the Rohingya have been targets of targeted ethnic violence. Firstly, during the military regime (1962-2011) the Rohingya came to be identified as ‘illegal immigrants’ by the passing of new exclusionary legislation and secondly, that they posed a security threat because of their ‘expansionist’ agenda. The origins of both of these narratives can be traced back to colonial times. However, whilst they didn’t actively discriminate against the Rohingya, colonial policies shaped the Rohingya into a vulnerable target to be scapegoated both by the military and majority Burmese and extremist Buddhist groups later on.

So, what has been the response of the civilian government to this humanitarian crisis and how has the military justified its blatant ethnic violence? In 2019, the then Prime Minister and Nobel Peace prize winner, Ms. Suu Kyi testified in front of the International Court of Justice, defending the military against allegations of ethnic cleansing. Ms. Suu Kyi’s response was vague, referring only to the possibility that a disproportionate use of force had been applied [3]. This highlights the fragility of the civilian government in Myanmar and that its continued existence is dependent on good relations with the military elites. Myoe (2011) argued that so long as democratisation occurred within the confines of the 2008 military Constitution, the democratic rule would be tolerated [4]. For example, given Ms. Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy’s (NLD) increased majority after the 2020 elections [5], it is unsurprising that the Tatmadaw initiated a military coup. Even with their fixed 25% of parliamentary seats, the military would have been unable to oppose the NLD’s popular agenda to pass constitutional reforms. Ultimately these reforms would have prevented the military from blocking liberalising reforms in parliament, resulting in the limitation of their political power.

Against this backdrop, how has colonialism contributed to this current state of affairs? On the most basic level, the colonial period in Myanmar saw the re-configuration of ethnic identity, which can be argued to set the foundations for the Rohingya to be resented by the majority groups and later actively discriminated against during the military regime. The use of ‘divide-and-rule’ is a common strategy of colonial powers, involving the separating and re-organisation of sub-national groups in society and is used to assert colonial power more efficiently [6]. This strategy re-configured how society viewed ethnic identity [7] and ultimately resulted in a ‘highly polarised multi-ethnic society, where ethnic consciousness was significantly enhanced’ (Cornish, 2021, 14). This shift was important because it occurred over a long period, meaning that as different ethnic groups were consolidated within themselves at different times, different groups ended up having different experiences of British colonialism. Therefore, the British period increased the salience of ethnic identity, which is often argued to be the source of conflict in multi-ethnic states.

This leads to my second point, one that emphasises the origins of the Rohingya community in Myanmar, which is arguably one of the key root causes of the current conflict and has been used to legitimise anti-Rohingya violence. Britain’s occupation of Myanmar was achieved in three stages, starting with the colonisation of Arakan and Tannaserrim states in the South [8]. During this first stage of colonization, the British encouraged the flow of migrant workers from British occupied Chittagong, India into the Rakhine state [9]. This is incredibly important because the military regime used this to denounce the Rohingya as ‘illegal immigrants’ and being of Indian rather than Burmese descent. For example, the 1982 Citizenship Act revoked citizenship for approximately 600,000 Rohingya on the basis that they were not an indigenous group. Not only did this strip over half a million previous citizens of political rights, but it denied their existence as one of the 135 recognised ethnic groups by the state, further stripping them of the ability to acquire jobs or healthcare. This was the first time that belonging to one of the ‘national races’ had become a prerequisite for citizenship. So, whilst the politicisation of ethnic identity occurred after the end of British rule, it is unlikely that such a policy would have been passed without Britain’s re-organisation of ethnicity into separate identities, and labour migrant policies during the first stage of occupation.

Now with regard to the second narrative mentioned earlier; that the Rohingya are perceived to be a threat to the Buddhist majority, we can again trace the origins of this narrative to colonial times. Prior to the Second World War, the Rohingya were already resented by other ethnic groups because of favouritism from the British [10]. This was exacerbated during the War when the British promised the Rohingya their own homeland in return for their support; a stark contrast to the Burmese majority supporting the Japanese. Bearing this in mind, the perception of the Rohingya as a separatist ethnic minority can be better understood. In a sermon delivered by a leading radical Buddhist monk and leader of the anti-Rohingya ‘969 Movement’, U Wirathu claimed the Rohingya would seek to prioritise the survival of their own ethnic group above that of the nation. In other words, he claimed the Rohingya associated with their ethnic identity, over their national identity. This insight into the attitude of a leading extremist Buddhist figure reinforces the notion that developments during and since the Second World War have consolidated the Rohingya’s reputation as a group that threatens the unity of Myanmar.

To sum this all up, the instigators of violence towards the Rohingya were not rooted in colonial times, but the conditions which made the Rohingya susceptible to scapegoating and vulnerability were created by the British regime. Today the Rohingya’s portrayal as a secessionist seeking, outsider group with no formal ties to being a national race or indigenous ethnic group within Myanmar can explain the current policies that seek to remove them from Myanmar’s history.

References

[1] OHCHR. “Mission report of OHCHR rapid response mission to Cox’s Bazar.” (2017).

[2] UN News. ‘Security Operations by Myanmar Show “Established Pattern” of Domination over Ethnic Groups – UN Expert’, 1 February 2018. https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/02/1001741.

[3] UN News. ‘Aung San Suu Kyi Defends Myanmar from Accusations of Genocide, at Top UN Court’, 11 December 2019. https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/12/1053221.

[4] Myoe, Maung Aung. “The soldier and the state: the Tatmadaw and political liberalization in Myanmar since 2011.” South East Asia Research 22, no. 2 (2014): 233-249.

[5] BBC News. ‘Myanmar: Aung San Suu Kyi’s Party Wins Majority in Election’, 13 November 2020, sec. Asia. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54899170.

[6] Ansar, Anas. “The Unfolding of Belonging, Exclusion and Exile: A Reflection on the History of Rohingya Refugee Crisis in Southeast Asia.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 40, no. 3 (2020): 441-456.

[7] Cornish, Grace. 2021. ‘The Rohingya Conflict: Origins of Violence and The Buddhist Narrative’. Undergraduate Dissertation, University of York, 2021.

[8] Ganesan, Narayanan. “Democratization and its implications for the resolution of ethnic conflict in Myanmar.” Asian Journal of Peacebuilding 5 (2017).

[9] Rahman, K.A., 2015. Ethno-political conflict: The Rohingya vulnerability in Myanmar. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Studies, 2(1), pp.288-95.

[10] Schonthal, Benjamin. “Making the Muslim other in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.” Islam and the state in Myanmar: Muslim-Buddhist relations and the politics of belonging (2016): 234-257.

[11] Tech Truth. “The Holy Buddhist Monk Ashin Wirathu Addressing His People”. YouTube video, 00:21.4 April, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epZ1bboWSdw.

Genocide and its Relevance Today (Part V) – Just Words? The Failure of the ‘Never Again’ Convention

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by Anna Plunkett

A group of Rohingya refugees, crossing the border into Bangladesh (Image credit: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

In 1994, some fifty years after the Holocaust ended, the Rwandan Genocide rocked the world; forcing us to re-evaluate the international community’s role in addressing crimes against humanity. Yet in 2017 it became clear that the call for such atrocities to happen ‘Never Again’ was more a sentiment than a commitment to the world’s most oppressed. As the world watched Rohingya villages pillaged and burned, the violence forced over half a million persons to flee. The UN failed to act, respond, or protect those in Myanmar’s Western State.

The Crisis

It was in August 2017 that the ongoing plight of the Rohingya people erupted onto international consciousness as over half a million people fled their homes and villages in Myanmar across the border to Bangladesh. In the weeks and months that followed, first-hand accounts, mobile footage, and aerial imagery provided evidence of the extent of the devastating violence and destruction, including widespread rape and torture, mass killings, and the razing of villages. These actions, conducted by the military, were condoned as part of a ‘land clearance’ operation said to be focused on the neutralisation of ethnic armed rebels operating in the area.

Whilst shocking, the warning signs of the possibility of such atrocities were there. Despite the country’s rich diversity, the Rohingya have struggled to gain legal recognition within Myanmar. The Citizenship Law of 1982 removed the nominal legal status they had held since independence within the country. Although they were eventually granted white cards, which provided them nominal rights, it also identified them as having a migrant rather than citizenship status. Moreover, these cards were revoked before the 2015 election leaving most of the community with no access to their right to vote and with no Muslim candidates being fielded for the election. Further laws restricted the Rohingya’s access to education, healthcare, or work, as well as leaving them without any right to marry and have children. If this was not enough, in 2015 the migrant boat crisis in Asia was only a warning sign of what, for the Rohingya people, was to come just a few years later in 2017.

The Response

Despite the warning signs of oppression, the international recognition of the difficulties the Rohingya faced came too little and too late. In the immediate wake of the crisis, the UN and other international organisations were left paralysed after Myanmar refused to grant access to the affected region or officially acknowledge the events unfolding there. Despite international outcry and pressure being placed on the newly elected government, the violence continued unabated. On the international level, a lack of consensus within the UN Security Council left its international mechanisms unable to respond effectively to the ongoing crisis.

The UN response was further limited in-country by internal struggles. The UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee, who can no longer enter the country, has struggled to lead and complete effective monitoring on Myanmar’s human rights situation due to ongoing barred access to affected communities. Moreover, in 2017 the Resident Coordinator of the UN Country Team in Myanmar was rotated out after the state government raised complaints with regards to suspected bias. Although a UN Special Envoy has since been deployed and the Security Council delegation visit to Myanmar conducted in May 2018 went ahead, access is still limited with most negotiations held in the capital Naypyidaw, far away from the realities of Rakhine.

Where are we now

It took almost a year for the reality of the Rohingya situation to be officially recognised. The UN report summarising the fact-finding missions finally identified what many in the human rights community had been labelling it for over a year, accusing the Myanmar military of the Rohingya genocide.  This is a claim the Myanmar government continues to refute.

Investigations continue, and in November 2019, The Gambia filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice on the crimes of genocide against Myanmar. The case was heard in The Hague the following month with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi representing and defending Myanmar against the lawsuit. This event, controversially, presented a disturbing portrait of the Nobel Peace Prize Winner and previously world-renowned human rights activist. The final verdict may take months or years to be read.

Whilst there has been limited success in reaching a sustainable solution to the ongoing plight of the Rohingya, over the last year there has been increasing movement towards some cooperation. In October 2018, Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed on a repatriation programme for the refugees. Yet few Rohingya have shown willingness or even interest in returning, with no guarantee of access to citizenship or protection from the military should they do so.  Further, the continued refusal of the government to identify the group as Rohingya, or to accept as valid accusations of crimes against humanity or genocide, highlights an unwillingness to compromise or cooperate with either the affected people or the international community to resolve this deadlock.

A reflection on the utility of the Genocide Convention

An independent report into the UN’s handling of the Rohingya Crisis has identified ‘systematic and structural failures’ to protect the Rohingya people. We are not merely witnessing an unfolding tragedy in the mountains between Myanmar and Bangladesh, even one on a scale we never thought possible again. More significantly, this episode demonstrates the difficulties and failures of the UN to protect the world’s oppressed populations.

These failures highlight one of the most structural obstacles facing the UN – the willingness of its member states to cooperate. Myanmar is a member of the UN and despite not signing the Rome Statute, is still a signatory on the 1948 Genocide Convention. Their engagement and acceptance of international law is intermittent and limits the ability of the international community to cooperate and engage in Myanmar. Demonstrably, the presence and acceptance of UN policies to protect minority communities from state oppression, namely the Genocide Convention and Responsibility to Protect, have proven inconsequential. In the face of ‘Never Again,’ we have indeed stood by and observed such crimes occur. The effectiveness of UN’s policy, for all its good intentions, is dependent on the support and acquiescence of the host state and where this is not provided, neither is the protection of the world’s most vulnerable.

Anna is a doctoral researcher at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She received her BA in Politics and Economics from the University of York, before receiving a scholarship to continue her studies at York with an MA in Post-War Recovery. She was the recipient of the Guido Galli Award for her MA dissertation. Her primary interests include conflict and democracy at the sub-national level, understanding how various political orders are impacted by transitions at the sub-national level.

China, Myanmar, War Crimes and the Issue of “National Sovereignty”

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by Anna Tan

 

A banner reads “Myanmar warmly welcomes the Chinese President Xi Jinping” (Image credit: AP/Aung Shine Oo)

In September 2017, ten Rohingya Muslims were executed by the Burmese military in the village of Inn Din, Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). Afterward, journalists leading the Reuters investigation that exposed the massacre were charged with treason under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and once an icon of peace, fiercely defended the government’s incarceration of the two journalists arguing that their detention had “nothing to do with freedom of expression at all” and was all about the “violation of the Official Secrets Act”. The Reuters journalists were later released in 2019 through an annual presidential clemency after a year of unyielding international pressure and legal support led by Amal Clooney.

The whole debacle formed part of the 2016 persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, which entailed a violent crackdown of the Muslim minority that has settled in the land for generations. The Rohingyas were subject to the arson of their villages, gang rapes, and infanticide, which the UN has called a “textbook ethnic cleansing”. In the end, over 20,000 Rohingyas died and over 700,000 fled their homes, crossing the border to Bangladesh and residing in refugee camps ever since. Suu Kyi dismissed the genocide claims at the ICJ hearings filed by The Gambia and instead defended the “clearance operations” including the Inn Din massacre as part of a “counter-terrorism” response by the military, yet completely omitting a plethora of remaining war crimes committed by those same armed forces.

On 16 November 2019, the New York Times published the Xinjiang Papers, which explicitly showed in over 400 leaked pages a breakdown of how the Chinese government organised the crackdown on Uyghur Muslims – a Turkic ethnic minority – into “re-education camps.” These facilities, better described as concentration camps, see one to three million Uyghurs detained extrajudicially in Xinjiang each year. Later evidence also corroborated this puzzle. The BBC’s recent insider report on such “thought transformation camps” renders an eerie atmosphere as one cannot help but concur such camps are run with no motive other than ethnic-cleansing and Sinification.

Xi Jinping has repeatedly described the Uyghur Muslims as  “being infected by a virus” that needs to be “eradicated,” following multiple terrorist attacks in the region, in the form of riots, bombings, and knife attacks. For Beijing, “stability” is key since Xinjiang serves as the gateway for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects with Central Asia and Pakistan. However, Beijing’s approach to achieving stability is in many ways one that could instead undermine the state’s very authority and legitimacy, because of its oppressive policies pursued outside of the rule of law. Here, memories of the Tiananmen Massacre still remain fresh.

Meanwhile, in Myanmar, Suu Kyi’s refusal to call out the war crimes against civilians continued, with prospects for an end to the 70-year long Burmese Civil War seeming increasingly frail. Once a major Western ally, Suu Kyi’s shining moment after the landslide 2015 elections proved to be short-lived, leaving Myanmar dependent on China. Despite on-going local protests stirred by environmental and land-right concerns against China’s BRI projects in Rakhine, Suu Kyi has increasingly grown friendly with the Communist Party-led country which over the past two decades has consistently vetoed UN Security Council resolutions regarding human rights violations in Myanmar, actions perpetrated by the same actors that worked with the military in prolonging Suu Kyi’s house arrest. Once a fierce critic of China and of imbalanced investments, the foundations of Suu Kyi’s foreign policy have been upended. Instead, China is now employed as a bulwark against international criticism on Myanmar’s human rights fiasco.

Wang Yi and Suu Kyi in 2016 (Image Credit: Reuters)

Her meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi ahead of the ICJ hearings sent clear signals to the world that both countries are now united against the international community in Myanmar’s domestic political issues, with Suu Kyi thanking China for “safeguarding national sovereignty” and “opposing foreign interference.” China’s intermediation role with armed groups over the last couple of years has increased despite two failed attempts by China to repatriate the Rohingya, actions that are widely seen as having exacerbated the situation.

It is difficult to decipher the exact Sino-Burmese strategies in “resolving” the Rohingya crisis, but it remains crystal clear that both parties are suggesting that the West is an outsider in this rather peculiar yet unsurprising entente. China, usually staunch about following its “non-interference” principle to its foreign policies in contemporary political discourse, we see there can be exceptional cases. Earlier, during the Libyan Civil War in 2011, Beijing found its involvement essential, with over 30,000 Chinese nationals in Libya needing to be evacuated. Myanmar, on the other hand, provides China with a gateway to the Indian Ocean; thereby circumventing the South China Sea, a much-disputed area of maritime security and defence.

Once on antagonistic terms, the distinction between China’s communist leaders, Suu Kyi’s government and the military of Myanmar now seem to be increasingly challenging one to make, with their exclusionary narratives running parallel. Is China, an authoritarian country, truly an ideal friend to help Myanmar towards becoming a democracy, let alone a liberal one? Suu Kyi’s remarks thanking China for “safeguarding [Myanmar]’s national sovereignty” with regards to foreign influence is farcical. In addition, with the landmark visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Myanmar – which saw the signing of 33 memorandums of understandings (MoUs), protocols and agreements including bilateral partnerships on issues regarding border patrol, police, information and media services – there is little doubt as to the hegemonic aspirations of China.

Indeed, China’s moves with regards to a cash-strapped economy like Myanmar is another step in its debt-trap diplomacy. This development is reminiscent of the case of the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka – where the conflict-ridden country, unable to save its fledgling export rates and attract sufficient Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), found itself forced to sign a 99-year lease of the port to China to cover its colossal amount of current account deficit. Sri Lanka’s case should give Myanmar a premonition about what is still yet to come.

Xi Jinping and Aung San Suu Kyi shaking hands, during a visit aimed at cementing the ties between China and Myanmar (Image Credit: SCMP)

The ICJ’s verdict arrived shortly after Xi’s visit to Myanmar, on the 23 January. The UN court ruled against Myanmar with a unanimous approval of provisional measures as requested by The Gambia on the war crimes against the Rohingya. This ruling may well be a disappointment for many Burmese loyalists that rallied across the country in support of Suu Kyi’s ICJ defence earlier in December last year, as well as a cause for disillusionment amongst the country’s believers who were confident that the ICJ case is firmly secure in the hands of Suu Kyi’s political eloquence, despite the insurmountable evidence pointing in the other direction.

Though long overdue, perhaps the ruling will provide a stronger reason for the Burmese to question their status quo politics and politicians. However, the answers should be obvious as to whether Myanmar, currently caught in an asymmetric relationship with China, truly has its national sovereignty “safeguarded;” whether or not if Myanmar is walking in the right direction towards liberal democracy; and indeed whether a brighter or darker future awaits the country.

Anna is an MSc student for Global Affairs at King’s College London. She has previously worked for UNDP and the American Red Cross. Her research interests are on ASEAN-North Asian relations, conflict-resolution, human rights and diplomacy. She is also currently a Programme Coordinator for the Conflict, Security and Development (CSD) Conference 2020 hosted by Department of War Studies and Department of International Development (DID). You can follow her on Twitter: @AnnaTanGTW

A Question of Leadership: Lessons from the UN’s Actions in Myanmar

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by Gerrit Kurtz

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon meeting with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar Defense Services. (Image credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)

 

The UN’s inquiry into its own actions in Myanmar since 2012 draws significant parallels with a similar exercise that focused on the UN’s role during the end of the war in Sri Lanka. Once again, the UN found itself in a situation where a government was committing atrocities, but the UN showed an incoherent, ineffective response. Without clear leadership adjudicating differences among key stakeholders in the UN system, the principled engagement to which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had committed himself remained elusive.

Engaging with severe human rights violations requires courage and coherence, setting clear principles and the readiness to stand by them if they are under pressure. An independent inquiry on the UN’s action during the Rakhine crisis in Myanmar, which came out in June, observed that the international organisation showed a “systemic failure” in dealing with the state’s repression of the Rohingya people between 2010 and 2018. Choosing his words carefully, its author, the former Guatemalan foreign minister Gert Rosenthal, echoed a similar exercise on the UN’s behaviour during the end of the war in Sri Lanka in 2008/09. Importantly, the UN system’s shortcomings were not a simple matter of failing to speak out, but of incoherence across the system, exacerbated by the lack of executive decision-making in Myanmar and at headquarters level. The lack of leadership by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, despite his strong rhetorical commitment to human rights and atrocity prevention, deserves further attention.

From the UN’s perspective, the situation in Sri Lanka and Myanmar showed uncanny parallels, despite all objective differences. In Sri Lanka, the armed forces pursued a relentless final assault on the Tamil Tigers’ last hold-outs in Sri Lanka in 2008-2009. In Myanmar, the security forces attacked Rohingya civilians repeatedly, culminating in full-scale ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population in 2017. In both countries, governments were the major perpetrators of violence, the presence of armed groups notwithstanding. Both governments were opposed to a strong human rights presence by the UN, and frustrated efforts by the UN Secretariat to increase its relevant capacity.

Myanmar and Sri Lanka, though both at the time host to significant armed violence, had successfully objected to any political or peacekeeping presence. The Resident Coordinators (RC), the head of the UN Country Team, in both countries had been chosen at a time of relative peace and with a strong development focus, not a profile in international humanitarian and human rights law. There were even some personal overlaps: Vijay Nambiar, the special advisor on Myanmar between 2012 and 2016, had been one of the most important UN officials during the Sri Lanka crisis, as Ban’s chef de cabinet. Lastly, there were strong geopolitical divisions that manifested themselves in a reluctance of the UN Security Council to discuss the situation as an official agenda item. In short, they were among the most difficult situations for the UN to work in.

The central challenge, as identified by Rosenthal, is a familiar and highly pertinent one: “how the United Nations can maintain some type of constructive engagement with individual member states where human rights abuses are systematically taking place, while at the same time pressing for those states to uphold their international commitments.” In other words, the UN needs to find an adequate mix of “quiet diplomacy” and “outspoken advocacy”, approaches that are associated with different parts of the UN system. For such a mix, the UN needs an inclusive organisational structure to produce a coherent policy, communicated across the system, owned by the leadership, and based on current, on-the-ground information and analysis.

The failure in Myanmar, according to Rosenthal, was that none of those prerequisites were present. Both at country and at HQ level, there were stark differences of opinion regarding the most adequate modus operandi. These manifested themselves in an increasingly polarised  working environment, as a function of the high stakes involved in the crisis in Rakhine state. Both sides of the argument thought that the other approach was not only wrong-headed, but potentially dangerous and counterproductive to de-escalate the violence and reduce discrimination. The emotionally charged atmosphere explains the reports about critical individuals being excluded from key meetings by Renata Lok Dessalien. The UN also had difficulty accessing the most volatile areas of Rakhine state and providing independent monitoring after alleged incidents.

Perhaps most importantly, there was a lack of strategic leadership, not just at the country level, but also at the highest level of the UN system. Differences between Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, who pressed for advocacy, and Special Envoy Vijay Nambiar and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, who stressed quiet diplomacy and development efforts, respectively, were never resolved by Secretary-General Ban. Rosenthal writes, “even at the highest level of the Organization there was no common strategy.”

These shortcomings are particularly salient because Ban and Eliasson had vowed to turn a page after the damning findings of the Sri Lanka inquiry. They launched the “Human Rights up Front” initiative in late 2013 with the aim to improve coordination, information management, engagement with member states, and the UN’s organisational  culture. One of the new mechanisms established as part of the initiative was the so-called Senior Action Group (SAG). The SAG brought together the system’s most important parts at the top leadership level, including the UNDP Administrator, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, and other high-level officials. It was chaired by Deputy Secretary General Eliasson.

In the SAG’s discussion of the crisis in Rakhine state, Helen Clark, then UNDP administrator, protected UNDP and her RC, insisting that investing in development would also benefit the Rohingya, which should not be jeopardised  by an overly focus on human rights advocacy. Allegations of specific incidents required more investigation, she often insisted. According to a UN official familiar with these discussions that I interviewed, “any time there was a contentious issue, a dilemma between quiet diplomacy, public diplomacy and so on, the differences were simply discussed, and no executive decision was taken.”

While the UNDP administrator is appointed by the Secretary General, he or she also reports to the UNDP Executive Board. At the time, Clark had the final say on appointing or replacing RCs. The UN official that I interviewed described her behaviour as “territorial.” In any case, Ban could have insisted on a common position on the Rakhine crisis, not the least since Helen Clark had officially signed up to Human Rights up Front. Eliasson, who knew the destitute situation of the Rohingya from his time as Emergency Relief Coordinator in the early 1990s, had pressed for the replacement of the RC as early as 2015. Still, Ban did not overrule Clark nor did he “arbitrate a common stance between these two competing perspectives,” as Rosenthal writes.

The lack of leadership was highly problematic: the whole purpose of such high-level meetings as the SAG was to deal with questions that UN officials at the country level had not been able to agree on, and to create a common analysis and joint ownership of decisions. The different perspectives are ingrained in the distinct mandates and ways of working of the parts of the UN system; it falls to the collective leadership of the UN system to resolve tensions arising from the operational work. “Systemic failure” sounds like the reasons for incoherence lie mainly in structural differences. While these are important, ultimately responsibility for ensuring that the whole UN system works falls to its leadership, including the Secretary General and member states.

Clearly, the UN system is subject to the same cleavages and divisions that characterise  the international system as a whole. As Renata Lok Dessalien herself points out in a paper written after her assignment in Myanmar, conceptual differences regarding the meaning and interpretation of basic principles are ingrained in the UN Charter, for example between the promotion of human rights and the respect for national sovereignty. No internal UN reform such as Human Rights up Front can do away with those tensions, or abolish geopolitical differences. What it can do, and it has done with some mixed success, is change the way the organisation works, improving communication, analysis and decision-making procedures.

If the UN can hope to influence events in situations like those in Rakhine state in Myanmar at all, a coherent and coordinated policy across the whole system is a prerequisite. Otherwise both governments and critical member states are always able to play different parts of the system against each other, muting their respective effectiveness.

Luckily and despite significant opposition from key member states, the UN has started to improve its coherence in dealing with the crisis in Myanmar. Shortly after he came into office, Secretary General António Guterres appointed a permanent monitoring group within the UN, and prioritised strategic dialogue with Myanmar’s government, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. He also championed a reform of the RC system. When Myanmar’s armed forces began their military offensive that included ethnic cleansing in Rakhine state in August 2017, Guterres resorted to public diplomacy. In a rare step, he wrote to the UN Security Council, urging its members to take action. Also in 2017, Renata Lok Dessalien finished her position as RC in Myanmar. Her successor, the Norwegian Knut Ostby, emphasized communication and principled engagement, for example threatening to reduce all but essential aid to IDP camps in Rakhine state if the government did not improve the Rohingyas’ freedom of movement. At the same time, renewed fighting between the ethnic Rakhine Arakan armed group and the government as well as continued denial of citizenship have left around a million Rohingya refugees stranded in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

UN diplomacy consists of difficult balancing acts, in particular in dealing with unrepentant governments committing atrocities against their own population. Faced with an increasing emphasis of state sovereignty, including by the United States, Guterres has, at times, appeared to waver on human rights. If his prevention agenda is to succeed, he needs to mobilise all pillars of the UN to support each other, not just in Myanmar.

Gerrit Kurtz is a non-resident fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin. You can find him on Twitter @GerritKurtz

Out of Balance: A Review of Women’s Rights in Myanmar

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by Anna Plunkett

27 May 2019

Women Factory Workers Strike (The Myanmar Times, 2011)

Myanmar is a country that has sprung to global attention in the last few years, its seemingly self-led non-violent transition towards democracy was soon tarnished by the systematic ethnic cleansing of the country’s Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State. At the epicentre of these storms has been Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, nicknamed ‘the Lady’. The now State Counsellor had been the global symbol of modern non-violent, pro-democracy struggles from behind the bars of her house arrest. After her release in 2012 she won a landslide election to join the legislature as an MP for the National League of Democracy, a taste of the victory she would achieve three years later in the 2015 election. She soon achieved notice within Myanmar for her preference for traditional dress inspiring a resurgence in this simple but elegant style. However, since taking office she has failed to maintain this saint-like status, losing support both domestically and abroad.  Her fall from moral status symbol to a pariah of the diplomatic circles she was once the darling of provides a stark snapshot into the complexities facing women throughout Myanmar. Women in Myanmar are often portrayed as exotic and beautiful,  with striking images of long-necked tribes and thanaka painted faces used throughout the tourist industry. Yet their access to many leadership positions and even basic rights are fraught with much darker struggles.

Daw Suu was the symbol and leader of the pro-democracy struggle in Myanmar[1] since her arrival in the country in 1987. She gave inspiring speeches from outside the central hospital where she cared for her sick mother, the original reason for her return to the country after settling down with husband Michael Aris in Oxford. Since then, her face has been plastered on street signs, posters, postcards and matchboxes across Myanmar and internationally, despite domestic bans.[2]  In the wake of her rise within the political arena, and in response to the continuing conflicts within Myanmar’s borderlands, a plethora of women’s organisations jumped into existence.[3] Today, almost all ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) have dedicated women’s organisations or arms focused on the promotion of women’s rights, human rights and economic and social welfare. These groups, which have been fighting along almost all of Myanmar’s borderlands for autonomy from the state have been active since before Myanmar achieved independence.  The presence of such wars have isolated the communities in these regions from access to state services and international norms, something these women’s groups and branches focus on attempting to provide to the communities under EAO rule.  The mobilisation of women is not unique to the borderlands, with women’s rights groups forming within the capital and across the central zones. The power of these new women’s groups was seen during the women led factory strikes in 2015 and 2011 over worker protections within Chinese owned garment factories. Women have the capacity and are willing to mobilise around key issues that impact their lifestyles and livelihoods.

Women Fighters in Kachin (Adriene Ohanseian)

However, this organisation and activism is not fully mirrored in the positive progress of women’s rights within this transitioning state. Over the past four years a network of women’s organisations have organised “16 days of activism” to promote basic protections for women within Myanmar and advocate against domestic and other forms of violent abuse against women. An event that struggled to get official state approval in its first year, but has since gained standing with the Pa’O Ethnic Affairs Minister speaking at the event in 2018. The necessity of this activism became clear to one trainer when working within the local communities, by the end of a three-day training programme on domestic abuse almost all participants had identified and spoken about examples of physical or psychological abuse they had personally experienced.[4] Women’s rights continue to sit within a state of almost abject neglect, with the few ongoing state interventions failing to make the changes that are increasingly being demanded from below.

Another noted how domestic abuse was viewed as a “natural” part of relationships between men and women within many rural communities, this normalisation was attributed to the legacy of violence from the conflict within the borderlands and lack of education within many communities.[5]

The continuing war across Myanmar’s borderlands is compounding the struggle for women’s rights and equal opportunity. Multiple reports have identified rape as a weapon of war utilised by both the military and the EAOs.[6] More women are beginning to come forward, to seek justice and support, however services are stretched trying to provide adequate assistance within a justice system biased against victims. The justice system remains tied to the military dominated government, with cases often taking too much time and becoming so expensive that communities seek redress through alternative, often informal means. Many villages continue to rely upon village headmen or financial redress packages to provide justice over those of offered by the official justice mechanisms.

Despite this, the women of Myanmar are far from just victims within this uneven landscape. Women’s organisations continue to report and advocate on crimes and inequalities, even in the face of growing oppression from the state. In many of the conflict zones women act as the primary household earners, with men away at war or seriously injured by it. Where direct conflict has ended the persistent drugs epidemic in the borderlands, many women face being the sole providers for partners and sons with addictions. Women also play a critical and active role within Myanmar’s ethnic armed organisations, including roles as fighters within women’s units. Women continue to be active within their communities and fight to be heard and included.

Women’s activism within Myanmar’s conflict zones – both within the conflict effort and as primary earners – has materialised due to a belief that women pose less of a threat and are therefore less likely to be arrested. This belief has resulted in women taking on responsibilities traditionally reserved for men, such as village headmen. During the conflict in Karen State, the number of female village heads has surged, as the role became less desirable due to concerns over the violence such leaders face when interacting with the state:

“Village heads … are usually women, because men cannot survive the repeated beatings and punishments by the soldiers [whereas women are beaten and tortured somewhat less often]. Therefore, nobody wants to be a village head throughout the whole region.” Female Village Head

Yet once this danger has passed, women have found themselves removed from these roles in power and leadership. They are blocked from these key leadership positions which increase in desirability as the immediate threat has reduced with the signing of the National Ceasefire Agreement in 2015.

Women Representation in the Peace Process (USAID)

Women have fulfilled a breadth of roles within Myanmar’s war efforts, from fighters to negotiators and mediators to service providers and village heads. Yet as wars within the borderlands begin to reduce so have the roles open to women. Despite the opening of the national dialogues for peace, and the government more broadly under the National League for Democracy, women are failing to achieve representation.  A recent report released by USAID highlighted the underrepresentation of women within the peace process, with many fulfilling technical roles within the peace process but unable to engage with policies under negotiation.  Meanwhile women continue to be victims within Myanmar’s war zones and at home. Despite their organisation and promotion of their plights, reforms to make domestic abuse illegal have stalled in parliament.

Women may be visible within the political arena in Myanmar, and their roles may be varied, but they still lack access to basic rights and this is proving a chokehold not only for them, but for Myanmar’s development overall. Progress is beginning to develop but it is slow and proving to be increasingly ineffective in the wake of increasing demands for women’s rights, participation and activism. Though the state may be slow to respond there is no doubt about the veracity of womens activism in Myanmar, which if the state could harness could prove to be force of will needed to establish change.

Anna is a doctoral researcher in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She received her BA in Politics and Economics from the University of York, before receiving a scholarship to continue her studies at York with an MA in Post-War Recovery. She was the recipient of the Guido Galli Award for her MA dissertation. Her primary interests include conflict and democracy at the sub-national level, understanding how minor conflicts impact democratic realisation within quasi-post conflict states. Her main area of focus is Burma’s ethnic borderlands and ongoing conflicts within the region. She has previously worked as a human rights researcher focusing on military impunity in Burma and has conducted work on evaluating Bosnia’s post-war recovery twenty years after the Dayton Peace Accords. You can follow her on Twitter @AnnaBPlunkett.

[1] Then Burma, the military SPDC government changed the name in 1989 though Burma was still widely used until the transfer to a civilian government in 2011

[2] This has been reported by ex-political prisoners who were arrested simply for having images of “The Lady” after the 8888 uprising.

[3] For example, see Women’s League of Burma, GEN and WON – all womens networks with large member organisations based on womens rights.

[4] Insight from field interview with women’s rights trainers, conducted by Author in 2018

[5] Testimonies given as part of research on Myanmar’s democratisation process as part of the author’s PhD research. Testimonies were collected by the author on multiple research trips between 2018-2019.

[6] See reports by Karen Human Rights Group and Kachin Women’s Association Thailand respectively: https://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/suffering-silence-sexual-violence-against-women-southeast-myanmar-december-2018 https://kachinwomen.com/reports/