The Myanmar military staged a coup against the elected civilian government in February 2021. Since then, the country has been in a state of emergency and ruled by a military junta. Resistance to the coup was swift and widespread, beginning with the Civil Disobedience Movement that has now morphed into the People’s Defense Forces. A state of civil war has remained for well over two years now, reversing the previous trend toward democratic transition. Nonetheless, the democratic interlude has spawned strong resistance to military rule. The armed conflict and contestation for power looks set to continue into the medium term and may eventually lead to domestic political changes toward democratization.

This article surveys the trajectory of peace and conflict studies in Myanmar—from its early focus on civil war and insurgency, to state institutions and ethnic armed actors, and later broadening into relational and networked approaches covering formal peace processes, regional geopolitics, conflict economies, and everyday peacebuilding. It suggests that the widening of peace and conflict studies was brought about by the opening of the country from the early 2010s, which both granted scholars and researchers more access to the country and introduced new foreign specialists, discourses, and developmental actors into the political sphere. The peace agenda and directions of peace studies have been upended by the military coup of 2021; how reconciliation, justice, and federal democratic reform will look like in the future remains to be seen.

We addressed the research question, how does the host community perceive the effects of Rohingya influx to Bangladesh, from their perspectives using a questionnaire survey, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. Bangladesh sheltered over a million Rohingyas, fleeing genocide and serious crimes against humanity, on humanitarian grounds. The local people welcomed them and offered direct support and assistance. Our findings suggest that their immediate sympathy for Rohingyas faded over time due to various factors. An overwhelming majority perceived the Rohingyas as pressure on their land and resources and being deprived on numerous grounds outweighed the disproportionate economic incentives of the influx. The findings offer fresh insights into the challenges of hosting refugees in the local communities because of the diverse impacts of forced displacement.

Myanmar has undergone democratic transition since 2010 when the country introduced elections and a parliamentary form of government. The country has now had two successive governments, the first led by President Thein Sein and the second by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. Both governments have made the ethnic peace process, based on the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, a key policy issue. Nonetheless, only limited success has been obtained thus far, and important structural and agency factors inhibit greater progress. These factors, termed “democracy deficits” in this article, suggest that the peace process has limited scope for further success in the medium term, and that the interactions between these two factors has only worsened the situation. A postscript brings the article up to date.

We re-evaluate Burmese history from the perspective of Thai philosopher Prawase Wasi who asserts that the basis for society is not simply individuals but the “selfforming group.” He discusses the essential nature of a self-forming group which is embodied in the Thai Buddhist concept of taam, which are sacred virtues emerging from self-organizing groups. In between the taam and self-forming groups are institutions of the state, economy, and education, etc. Prawase Wasi’s approach has been used in Thailand to guide government policies for the last twenty years. In this article, we apply this model to the history of conflict in Burma. We contrast this approach with the more traditional focus on individualism and utilitarianism in western high modernism which typically shapes development policies.

This article addresses the issue of schooling for refugees, as members of a stateless nation, in the context of Karen refugees in Thailand. The authors used ethnographic methods of in-depth, semi-structured interviews and participant observation with over 250 residents of Mae La refugee camp. Our conceptual framework draws on theories of pedagogy for liberation and grassroots development. We found that, due to overlapping sources of authority with divergent visions of the future for refugee learners, the existential crisis of being members of a stateless nation is the most pressing issue for education to address. We suggest that a top-down approach to refugee education relying on technical solutions, while ignoring issues of history, power, and meaning-making, will ultimately fall short of being fundamentally transformative.

This article seeks to answer the questions of whether sanctions are ‘smart’ as designed and why if they are not. Evidence appears to suggest that smart sanctions are not ‘intelligent’ enough to change political leaders’ alleged violent behavior or to protect innocent civilians from direct or physical as well as indirect or structural violence. Targeted government officials can always find ways to outsmart the sanction sender actors by resisting the latter’s coercive efforts because of their willingness and ability to take repressive action against their people and find alternative trading partners as well as support from powerful undemocratic states. Instead of minimizing human suffering, sanctions tend to exacerbate regime insecurity and perpetuate international alliance politics. The cases of Myanmar and North Korea validate this proposition.

The Third Panglong Peace Conference convened in Naypyitaw in July 2018 has led to the accession of two more armed groups to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement bringing the total number of signatories to ten groups now. Conversely, this development has weakened the United Nationalities Federal Council that previously housed the non-signatories collectively. There were far less agreements this time around and major sticking points include the military’s insistence that the armed groups agree not to secede from the Union of Myanmar which the latter have refused thus far. The military is also interested in discussing disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration while the armed groups are keen on broader security reforms. China again facilitated the Northern Alliance’s attendance of the meeting.

The process of democratization that began in 2010 in Myanmar has benefitted the peace process with the ethnic insurgent groups. While the first Thein Sein government was only nominally civilian and the democratization process itself is a top down effort initiated by the military, democratization has structurally and institutionally strengthened the peace process. The new NLD government that took office in April 2016 has now taken control of the process and has earned goodwill for its efforts in dealing with the ethnic minorities. Nonetheless, there is still sporadic fighting between the ethnic groups themselves as well as between some groups and the military, even as the government works towards a more comprehensive settlement.

The process of democratization that began in 2010 in Myanmar has benefitted the peace process with the ethnic insurgent groups. While the first Thein Sein government was only nominally civilian and the democratization process itself is a top down effort initiated by the military, democratization has structurally and institutionally strengthened the peace process. The new NLD government that took office in April 2016 has now taken control of the process and has earned goodwill for its efforts in dealing with the ethnic minorities. Nonetheless, there is still sporadic fighting between the ethnic groups themselves as well as between some groups and the military, even as the government works towards a more comprehensive settlement.

On October 15, 2015, the government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar signed a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with eight of the sixteen ethnic armed groups it had been negotiating with. The aim of the Thein Sein government had been to sign the agreement with all sixteen groups, but this was not realized. One reason why eight of the groups have been left out is the ongoing fighting between the Myanmar military and some of the groups, and the army’s unwillingness to involve them in the ceasefire process. Similarly, some of the ethnic armed groups have also indicated that they are unwilling, or not ready, to sign the NCA at this time.

The Myanmar Peace Center (MPC) is one of the newest organizations with a focus on peace in Asia. It was initially formed in October 2012 with a core group of 13 members. Since then it has gone on to become a much larger and also much more institutionalized organization. The nature of its work differs from that of most other peace research centers in that it is the organization appointed by the Myanmar President and government to bring an end to ethnic and sectarian conflict in the country.

Myanmar is currently undergoing widespread changes that are transforming the country’s political and socio-economic landscape. These changes include the newly promulgated Constitution that was ratified in 2008 and a national election held in November 2010. Additionally, by-elections in April 2012 saw the return to Parliament of the National League for Democracy and its leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The reforms under the new Thein Sein-led government include a congenial working relationship with the political opposition, freeing political prisoners and the granting of amnesty to political exiles to encourage their return, the negotiation of ceasefire agreements with almost all of the ethnic insurgent armies, and the inauguration of the Myanmar Peace Centre as a vehicle for the resolution of domestic conflict. These and related reforms are designed to secure the government’s internal and external political legitimacy which it has lacked since the fall of the previous socialist government in 1988.