Myanmar's Invisible Peacemakers

It may not be obvious to observers, but women are playing a quiet, but important role in attempts to bring Myanmar’s long-warring parties to some form of peace. Members of the Women’s League of Burma, invited as observers to the formal peace process between 2011 and 2015, informally engaged with the predominantly male negotiators through “hallway meetings”, bringing male counterparts tea and food as a vehicle to engage.

While the prospect of a formal, or “Track One”, peace process involving diplomats at the government level is slim, civil society groups, specifically those led by women, continue to play central roles in sustaining peace in both formal and informal avenues developed during the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement process between 2011-2015.

Civil society groups, specifically those led by women, continue to play central roles in sustaining peace in both formal and informal avenues.

Bringing sharper focus to this push for more meaningful participation is essential in supporting women’s involvement at formal talks and making visible the ongoing key roles women play in multi-track diplomacy which consists of three levels, albeit in parallel, informal and underground formats.

There are three levels to multi-track diplomacy. Women have been absent from Track One, which is the formal process. Track Two is understood as the “in-between” which engages influential parties in discreet and largely off-record talks and is often facilitated by third parties. Many of these activities take place at the civil society organisation or community-based organisation level, or what would be termed the Track Three level, or the community level.

In a post-coup environment, understanding that sustaining peace occurs across multiple tracks and outside the confines of a formal Track One peace process is essential. For instance, disparate movements have also been influential in supporting Myanmar women’s movements and visibility. In Southern Thailand, movements like the Peace Agenda of Women have brought together 23 women’s groups to advocate for women’s protection and public safety in Myanmar and near the border.

In a post-coup environment, understanding that sustaining peace occurs across multiple tracks and outside the confines of a formal Track One peace process is essential.

This is not always as utopian as it may seem, with many ethnic minority women in Myanmar still feeling excluded from advocacy groups. The influence women as caretakers and community leaders have also played in preventing violence cannot be underestimated. Emerging research has demonstrated how women in Kayah state in eastern Myanmar have often been the sole caretakers of their homes and communities as men leave to find work in other states. Many of these women report feeding troops and working to maintain stability within their community to minimise violence and hostility.

Measuring the exact impact these movements have had on formal decision-making is a difficult and perennial question but as peace processes in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine show, there is a need to expand peacemaking strategies beyond the Track One peace table to include more diverse ways of sustaining peace and security for communities in conflict.