This article traces the development of peace studies in Mindanao, arguing that Mindanao’s distinct multicultural context ensured the field’s tight linkage to Islamic and Mindanao studies. In all, the search for peaceful resolution of the armed conflicts in these parts of the Philippines provided the activist-inspired impetus for the field’s growth and determined the highly localized focus of formal and nonformal peace education, research, and publications in and on Mindanao. Peace studies practitioners— from the academe, non-governmental organizations, and religious institutions—contributed to the shaping of national policies and programs for Mindanao, with government policy, in turn, buttressing the institutionalization of their initiatives. This article also provides comparative insights on the nature and evolution of Mindanao peace studies and that of Western peace studies.

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.

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.

The people of Muslim Mindanao in the southern Philippines overwhelmingly approved, in a plebiscite in 2019, the creation of a new and more autonomous region, raising hopes that the decades-long conflict in Mindanao would soon end. This article asserts that the Mindanao peace process is not just about peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, but it should also include the effective participation of grassroots organizations and community-based peace advocates in resolving local conflicts. It evaluates four significant contributions of grassroots-level, local organizations and NGOs to the peace process: (1) combating violent extremism, (2) broadening peacebuilding by local women’s organizations, (3) solving local conflicts and rido (clan wars), and (4) ceasefire monitoring and civilian protection.

This study investigates the effects of a peace education camp, designed and organized by women peace advocates, in shaping the beliefs and attitudes of youth leaders after a violent incident that threatened the gains of a peace process in the Philippines. The study uses quantitative methodology and a two observation (pretest-posttest) design. Seventy students participated in the research. The Beliefs and Attitudes toward Peace Issues (BATPI) scale developed by the researcher was employed. Data analysis procedures used the t-test for paired samples. Results showed that beliefs and attitudes of participants toward peace and the peace process significantly improved after the peace education camp. Implications and applications of findings are discussed and recommendations are offered.

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.

In this article, the limits and possibilities of Korean unification education is critically examined and compared with the peace process on the Korean Peninsula for overcoming division from the perspective of peace education. For the purpose of becoming a single unified Korea, the direction of unification education has been presented within a hostile frame to cultivate attitudes and values for its own sake. Peace education in a divided society refers to a collective effort to transform the situation of hostile division into peaceful coexistence and rapprochement. In this context, unification education for overcoming the division of the Korean Peninsula should be established as the subject of critical peace education according to the global standards of Sustainable Development Goal 4.7.

Nepal adopted a unique post-conflict development framework for mobilizing international support and government resources to facilitate its peace process. The main focus of this paper is the role played by the Nepal Peace Trust Fund (NPTF) in Nepal’s transition. The paper concludes that the main strengths of this model were its success in keeping ex-combatants in cantonments by creating a conducive environment, its harmonization of funds from donors and the government, and its contribution to national elections. However, the NPTF’s defects were many, including weak monitoring mechanisms, an inability to prepare for successful rehabilitation and to initiate projects to support transitional justice, and failure to stop the misuse of funds and corruption. Having taken stock of these failures, the paper explores a core reason for them: the NPTF’s isolation from the political process.