Introduction
In order to investigate the topic of conflict transformation in Myanmar, it is critical first to acknowledge the country’s historical background. In Myanmar, ethnic divisions and inequalities have facilitated a decade-long internal tension. Due to active militarization and ineffective governmental policies, representatives of ethnic minorities in Myanmar have faced various human rights violations. Women’s social status and roles in the country threaten them in light of the ongoing armed conflict. Armed conflict adds burden to women and girls’ traditional responsibilities. Sexual violence against women and girls in ethnic areas has emerged as an attribute of Myanmar’s armed conflict. One group, the Myanmar military forces, commonly known as “Tatmadaw,” has been responsible for sexual abuse in almost all complaints (Davies & True, 2017). The records of violent acts demonstrate unfair treatment and serious rights violations, indicating the need for changes.
The Rohingya, a Muslim minority group in Myanmar with 1.3 million individuals, have endured years of widespread oppression, state violence, and targeted crime in Rakhine State. A group of Rohingya militants executed a series of strikes on army and police posts, killing more than seventy citizens, together with twelve members of Burmese security personnel (Warren et al., 2018). As a result, the Myanmar military initiated a violent campaign on Rohingya villages, forcing over 700,000 individuals to migrate across the state line into Bangladesh as of August 2017 (Anugrah, 2019). The refugees then arrived and were distributed across Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia (Aziz, 2020). The ethnic problem of the Rohingya people in Myanmar is a tremendous violation of basic human rights. It symbolizes the state’s deeply ingrained problems with peace and regulations, indicating a major threat to certain ethnic groups.
In February 1947, The Panglong agreement was signed between the government representatives and three Myanmar ethnic minorities: Shan, Chin, and Kachin. These minorities now account for roughly two-fifths of the population (Cheesman, 2017). According to the agreement, all three ethnic groups were promised autonomy in their internal governance. However, shortly after signing the agreement, one ruling party member was assassinated while Myanmar was still under British influence (Bolton, 2020). As Myanmar gained its independence, a military regimen was established across the country. The military’s established dominance and privileges greatly restrict Myanmar’s chances of building democratic governance (Stokke & Aung, 2019). Therefore, the Panglong Agreement’s full potential was never realized.
Ethnic women’s organizations have been set up to deal with uncertainty and violation of human rights. Some were created as supplementary organizations to ethnic militant forces, while others are independent organizations that collaborate to promote women’s rights and consider societal problems that are especially important to women and children. Ethnic women’s organizations in Burma have been engaged in capturing human rights violations and cases of deprivation. Key challenges include widespread rape incidents, human trafficking, and domestic abuse, all of which have limited legal recourse (Pepper, 2018). Much of the women’s population advocacy revolves around these issues. Nonetheless, their competence is not being utilized in the political settlement.
Research Purpose
Women often are not valued and treated with bias in terms of decision-making and military matters, they are rarely incorporated in institutional peacebuilding such as resolving conflicts, negotiation, conflict prevention, and reconciling. The proposed research aims to investigate initiatives to establish a wave of sustainable peace in Myanmar, with a distinctive emphasis on the role of women in formal peace establishments. The main purpose is to identify the role of women in conflict transformation in the context of Myanmar. Therefore, the following research question will be addressed in the paper: What is the role Myanmar women play in the conflict transformation process?
Research Justification
Patriarchal norms restrict women from the political realm, but they also illustrate why women band together and fight for political reform in order to shape peace in ways that benefit women. Women could significantly impact conflict transformation if they could elevate tangible concerns and organize a powerful movement and system. The incentive to investigate why women are expected in peace negotiations and how they can intervene in existing issues sparked interest in the topic. This research is academically and socially significant because it provides valuable input into the roles and obstacles encountered by women in peace efforts in Myanmar and around the world. The study would help discuss women’s involvement and overview in politics, particularly in transitional populations.
State of Research
As the conflict transformation in Myanmar remains relevant to the discussion, we have seen a vast amount of literature on determining the impact of women on the existing issues. The purpose of this section coincides closely with the purpose of this study, which is to determine the particular roles women play in peacemaking initiatives. The feminist approach regards individual experiences and lifestyles as legitimate sources of information and observational entry points for recognizing conflict dynamics (Al-Kadi & Vale, 2020). The lack of comprehensive analysis of women’s peace operations practices, research approaches, and utility illustration through the case of Myanmar point to a research gap in this area. Although a formal peace practices have been carried out for a while, informal peacebuilding strategies have been used for far longer, however they remain little-researched and lack understanding. This section reviews the existing literature covering the case of Myanmar in conflict transformation from the prism of gender.
Women’s campaigns in Myanmar originally emerged along cultural lines, focusing on humanitarian assistance, women’s rights endorsement, and documentation of human rights abuses. According to Cárdenas (2022), various ethnic women’s organizations teamed up to publicize these issues and enhance awareness to create the Women’s League of Burma (WLB) in 1999. This collaboration has expanded incorporate participants from the Bamar ethnic population and ethnic minority women. Following the military regime’s demise in 2011, several entities previously active in exile relocated to Myanmar, altering the trends of the inter-ethnic women’s initiatives (Cárdenas & Olivius, 2021). Women’s organizations have gained some, but very restricted, access to the continuous peace negotiations (Olivius et al., 2022). However, the February 1, 2021, military junta and prevalent mass demonstrations that followed have pushed Myanmar into despair and halted formal peace talks (Loong, 2021). Due to the increasingly unstable political environment, women have played an important role in informal peacekeeping and the bottom-up initiation of ethnic partnerships.
The research from Buranajaroenkij (2020) found that, although women’s peace networks in Myanmar have gained significant recognition and awareness, this acknowledgment is only superficial and disregards women’s roles in unofficial politics. As a result, women continue to be on the outskirts of actively participating in peace efforts. For women to assert their roles in peace processes, both men and women must recognize the gender implications inherent in those systems. Another similar study indicated that interested parties and stakeholders in official peacebuilding are hesitant to bring women to the peace discussion (Cárdenas, 2022a). The study’s findings suggest that a sense of sustainable peace cannot be attained without women’s inclusion in systematic peacebuilding procedures.
Related field study implications of this research are the awareness that peace practice occurs outside of structured peace negotiations. Women, in particular, play an informal and community-based role in peacebuilding. Civil society organizations can serve as important entryways for women and people from distinct groups. Their integration could be the main factor in incorporating marginalized groups and their issues into the dialogue process, taking it beyond the scope of the masculinized and heavily armed (Pepper, 2018). Whilst women have made improvements, there is still substantial room for advancement because progress has been hampered by noticeable stereotyping and highly fragmented trends in engagement.
The data show that women’s vast nursing interventions are critical to the survival of households and communities, including during armed confrontation and in the ongoing post-war setting. On the other hand, women’s patient care has served as a form of resolving conflict, reducing violent behavior, and creating trust among populations regarding dispute performers such as both state and non-state militant groups (Blomqvist et al., 2021). Women’s silence should not be interpreted as a lack of choice but rather as an engaged and tactical answer to precarious conditions. Women use silence to maintain existing human ties, guard themselves and others, and guarantee their survival.
Research Method
The main approach of the research is qualitative, as the study aims to identify women’s roles in conflict transformation. Qualitative research entails gathering and analyzing non-numerical data, such as text, video, or audio, in order to better understand notions, viewpoints, or perspectives. The approach is to be originated in the content analysis method. A research instrument used to identify the presence of specific phrases or ideas within texts, or text samples is content analysis (Neuendorf, 2017). The occurrence, interpretations, and associations of such concepts and terms are quantified and analyzed by researchers, who then draw conclusions about the statements contained within the texts.
Directed Content Analysis
To be more specific, directed content analysis is best suited to the proposed research objective. The directed content analysis approach research is rooted in a previously observed theory. This content analysis approach is utilized to justify or further assess a formulated hypothesis. This approach can be carried out in several ways. One technique is to begin scripting the data using the previously determined identifiers. Another approach is to go over the existing codes and suggest different codes for any message that could not be classified using the previous method (Assarroudi et al., 2018). To identify the fundamental concepts, the directed content analysis focuses on and extends the existing theoretical framework.
Sampling Strategy
Humanitarian intervention is a sophisticated, multilateral change process. On study, a peacebuilding project can represent its goals and objectives, plotted timeframes, benchmark studies, anticipated outcomes, and outputs to funders, beneficiaries, and interested parties. The assessment and data gathering practices, which expose the plethora of factors at work, may reveal the emerging and fluid essence of the peacebuilding trajectories (King & Owen, 2020). This study draws on a wide range of sources to answer these questions. It is based on a number of secondary works from international scientific papers on women and peace procedures within the Myanmar context. Non-probability sampling is the most efficient sampling strategy for the study that is to be carried out. Non-probability sampling signifies a non-random sample and ease of data gathering. Non-probability sampling is a sampling strategy in which the likelihood of any aspect being chosen for a sample cannot be anticipated and is entirely dependent on the author’s subjective assessment (Wiśniowski et al., 2020). The method’s reliance solely on existing literature could explain the choice. As a result, the chosen sources must meet certain criteria to be applicable to the main research question.
Limitations. When implementing a content analysis method, several limitations and obstacles may arise. Primarily, the approach to content analysis is very liberal and subject to interpretation. Drawing conclusions based on subjective data frequently disregards the study’s theoretical foundation. Graneheim (2017) contends that an increased degree of subjectivity impacts validity. In some cases, investigators only consider the links demonstrated in the literary works that hinder the analysis. Since the method operates with textual data, it may ignore context. Understanding the context is an important part of the research because it aids in explaining concepts and gaining a deeper understanding. Such constraints may cause research to fall short of its objective.
Main Aspects and Data Analysis. The essential features to emphasize on in content analysis are observing the presence of specific themes in the data related to specific roles and actions of Myanmar women, as the level of analysis is to be generalized to themes. The text should then be coded into attainable content classifications. This is essentially a selective reduction process. The emphasis is placed on particular themes or patterns that contribute to the study objectives by categorizing the text. Obtaining a predefined set of categories is also crucial because it enables one to remain focused and look through the data for relevant concepts. The themes concerned in this research are mainly policies and various political incentives and policies women participate in. The data is to be analyzed using the latent analysis approach. On stage one of data analysis, a deductive system coding is to be implemented. Second stage implies recontextualization or comparing the coded data to the original data. Third stage aims to define homogenous groups of codes and to combine meaning units together. The final stage draws conclusions according to the main themes derived after coding.
Timetable
This chapter examines the parts to be included in the main research thesis and the approximate timeframes suitable for their implementation. These stages include tasks such as completing and summarizing the literature review as well as supplementing the background introductory part. Approximately one week should be allocated to successfully completing these tasks. Data collection, data analysis, drawing results and discussion, and finishing the paper draft are the following tasks to be completed before submitting the revised draft. Such tasks are more time-consuming and can require up to 60 days. However, it is important to note that the timeframes at this stage are highly subjective and can be flexible, depending on the requirements emerging during the course.
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