This report analyses the work on implementing the Women Peace and Security(WPS) agenda in Myanmar. As the conflict in the country is excessively complex withmultiple ethnic, indigenous, and linguistic groups we asked the important question:Who gets included/excluded from their implementation of WPS? And where lies thepower to shape gender equality work in the country? We answer this by looking atpower from two perspectives, material resources, and knowledge which both act associally constructive and exclusionary power. We argue that several bureaucraticinstitutions’ implementation lacks conflict sensitivity and intersectional perspective. While answering the questions we explain how the work and relationship betweendifferent international actors affect the local organization.

The purpose of this research is to examine China’s emerging role in peacebuilding. With a fast-growing economy, China is becoming very influential and has increased its political leverage in conflict-affected countries. At the same time, China’s foreign policy and strategy are evolving and Beijing is becoming more proactive in engaging and intervening on peacebuilding efforts. China has developed a unique peacebuilding approach, one that is based on economic growth as way to alleviate poverty and social unrest. China could contribute to bringing these alternative and complementary perspectives to the Peacebuilding debate and open this field to non-Western understandings. This research is going to examine China’s approach, its origins in China’s domestic situation and how China is exporting this model at the international level. Some of the aspects that will be analyse include: general aspects of the Chinese civilisation, philosophy and history, the domestic situation as well as on the ways that China handles its domestic conflicts in Xinjiang and Tibet; and some of the particularities and characteristics of Chinese foreign policy that shape the way it exports peacebuilding policies to the international arena. The intervention of China in the conflict of Kachin, Myanmar will illustrate how Chinese peacebuilding is evolving and moving away from its Westphalian principles of non-interference. China has thus become a key actor in supporting peace and stability and it should be part of any debate around peacebuilding moving forward based on shared interests in, and concern to promote peace and stability.

The 2021 military coup in Myanmar is part of a much bigger trend towards democratic regression in Southeast Asia where military influence has played an important role. Previous research on the SEA region suggests that the citizenry has been overlooked in understanding how civil-military relations have been shaped. Rebecca L. Schiff’s concordance theory presumes that when concordance, i.e., agreement, between the military, political leadership, and the citizenry exists on the four indicators (1) social composition of officer corps, (2) political decision-making procedures, (3) recruitment method and (4) military style, military intervention in domestic politics is less likely to occur. The aim of this thesis is to conduct a comparative case study of Myanmar and Indonesia to understand how the three actors have shaped their respective civil-military relations. By applying concordance theory, a comparison is made to assess the theory’s predictive and explanatory power of the two cases. Results suggest that the two cases' political developments are in line with the theory. Indonesia demonstrates a higher degree of concordance among all indicators and has not experienced a military intervention in the studied time period. Comparatively, Myanmar demonstrates a low degree ofconcordance among all indicators and subsequently, military intervention in domestic politics is common. However, a lack of data on some indicators questions the strength of these claims. Collecting primary material for future research is suggested to analyse the concordance of all four indicators in depth and ensure an accurate representation of the citizenry for both cases.

Is intersectionality the way forward: A textual analysis of development strategies in Myanmar Development strategies need new perspectives to effectively allocate resources to those most affected by natural hazards, conflicts, economic insecurities, and many more. This qualitative thesis suggests intersectionality in the form of an analysis to uncover hidden passages in and core values of development strategies. In turn evaluating if these strategies hold a necessary amount of awareness of vulnerable groups by crossing the sections gender and sexuality; age; class status; ethnicity; and disability. By examining two development strategies in Myanmar, one can conclude that there is a lack of intersectional approach when creating the outline of the interventions which suggests a lack of context-based evaluations of the issues in Myanmar, and in turn it suggests a lack of understanding on who is vulnerable.

How can actors and agencies in post-conflict societies construct activities and navigate theirways through the challenges affecting locally owned peace process? What are the majorchallenges obstructing the goals for peace-building in local post-conflict societies? How canthese challenges be tackled to enable local peace process to become sustainable? These questionsare deeply motivated by the presumably failed peace-building processes in Myanmar. This thesisseeks to contribute to the feasibility of peace-building in local context. To highlight thechallenges of locally owned peace process which- are shaped by the elements of local ownership,this thesis offers a layout on which peace practitioners, policy makers and donor agencies canembed their framework for local peace operations in post-conflict societies. The existing elementof local ownership distorts reality and creates numerous challenges for post-conflict internal andexternal actors and agencies implementing peace framework. To counter the impediments oflocal ownership in post-conflict peace-building, this thesis argues for external-local ownershipand cooperation, as a means to promote and strengthen transparency of all forms of supportsnecessary to achieve sustainable peace-building goals in local post-conflict societies.

There is a grave concern for the life, liberty and security of individuals who have been forced to leave their homes and have become dispersed within their native countries and throughout the Asian continent. These internally displaced persons and refugees are the subject of this study. Some of the themes that will be discussed include: civil war, human rights violations and the economy, since these are the problems affecting the populations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Myanmar. These case studies are of particular interest because Afghanistan is where most refugees come from, Myanmar has the longest-running military regime and Pakistan hosts the most refugees in the world. All three case studies are currently in a state of civil war, are breeding grounds for violations of human rights and have corrupt economies. Thus, the goal is to end armed conflict, to put an end to the human rights violations that come with it and to restructure the economies in each of these nation states so that the internally displaced persons and refugees can be repatriated, since displacement has become too much of a burden for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Myanmar's neighboring countries, who have been taking in all of the refugees from said countries. Theoretically, if the issues causing displacement were to be solved, then the countries that host refugees would be able to concentrate on their own populations. This study can potentially address the gap between knowledge, policy formation, and policy implementation to realize the goals of the international community in dealing with the displacement crisis.

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This research project aims at exploring the role and potential of digital media in the current democratization process in Myanmar. Understanding democratization as a process of social change that implies empowering civil society and ensuring equality, the question is how digital media contribute to building a participatory democracy in Myanmar after a five decades long military regime. The fast chain of events that led to the recent gradual opening of Myanmar raises doubts and expectations colliding with the vibrant reality of the country. In order to analyse the role of digital media within such a fast-changing scenario, this research intends to answer the following questions: a) How do digital media portray Myanmar? This question will be analysed in relation to the media discourse of the official visit paid by Myanmar’s President Thein Sein to US President Barack Obama in Washington on 20 May 2013. b) How do stakeholders in Myanmar use digital media for democratization? To what extent can digital media become a tool for democratization within a very limited connectivity context? What challenges may the digital media imply in the democratization of Myanmar? Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders were conducted in Yangon to gather up-to-date and first-hand insights. The combination of two qualitative research methods, discourse analysis and semistructured qualitative interviews, aims at building a deeper understanding of the role and potential of digital media in Myanmar. This research pays attention to specificities of Myanmar’s cultural, political and economic context, with a focus on technology and Internet. Field research showed the importance of taking into account the role of social media. A brief theoretical discussion of key concepts such as ‘digital media’, ‘social change’ and ‘democratization’ is provided to build a solid basis for analysis.

The purpose of this minor field study, and BA-thesis, is to visualize the situation for Rakhine Buddhists and Rakhine Muslims; both through their stories and through analysing Enemy Imaging within the two researched groups. The research questions posed are “What do the informants emphasise regarding their situation pertaining to the conflict and their everyday life” and “To what extent could the image of The Other be called an Enemy Image”. Methods of Thematic Content Analysis and Framing are used to analyse the material and theories of Enemy Imaging and Othering constitute the theoretical base of the study. The analysed material, ten interviews, five with Buddhists and five with Muslims, all identifying as being Rakhine, show that the informants experience feeling threatened and scared as well as to a large extent feeling misunderstood and unfairly treated. There were very few signs of Enemy Imaging among the Muslim group, but far more in the Buddhist group. This thesis calls for further research both within these two groups and extended to other actors identified in the context.