Roundtable: Deadlocks in Burma’s Politics – Ethnic Regions & Central Myanmar

Photo: archive

This roundtable will be held in two sessions, coordinated by Chosein Yamahata from the Graduate School of Policy Studies, Aichi Gakuin University, and Catherine Renshaw from Western Sydney University, Australia.

This roundtable examines Myanmar’s major deadlocks by analyzing the root causes of ethnic conflicts in different parts of the country, other pressing activities/changes in the areas of major ethnic groups, and the marginalization of non-Buddhist ethnic communities from the
following aspects.

• International law instruments and the constitution
• The deadlocked peace and the promotion of federalism
• Academic/media freedoms, civil liberties, and ethnic equality
• Health security, humanitarian assistance and lifelines of the IDPs/refugees
• Prevention of conflict, the resource curse, and human trafficking
• Social livelihood, the limits of development and impact of conflict in borderlands
• The destructive potential of extremism and political instability
• Ethnic atrocities, subsequent grievances and human insecurity
• State-centric approaches protecting states and delegitimizing ‘non-state’ actors in the face of state violence
• The impact of geopolitics on the national political landscape and democratic consolidation
• Transition from a top-down system without a civil society to a bottom-up system with civil society

Click here to read the full roundtable summary plus list of invited participants.