The 2021 5 Level-Consensus (5PC), underpinned by key factors of cessation of violence, constructive dialogue, ASEAN-facilitated mediation and humanitarian help, and particular envoy visits, stays foundational to ASEAN’s proposed resolution to the disaster in Myanmar since its army junta staged a coup in February 2021. Nonetheless, with solely dormant implementation, some legitimacy-lending acknowledgement of the junta regime, and rising disconnect to in style calls for of Myanmar’s individuals, criticism of the 5 PC holds that it’s shedding crucial, if not whole, relevance in face of quickly altering panorama of insurgency and resistance within the nation. Civil society organisations highlight particularly how the 5PC failed to handle the rampant gender-based army atrocities and to recognise girls as very important contributors to peace and democracy in Myanmar, a discovering echoed by reporting of the Particular Rapporteur on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, on gendered impacts of the coup.
The disconnect between ASEAN’s Myanmar priorities and its up-and-coming gender technique in peace and safety governance, based on the Ladies, Peace and Safety (WPS) agenda, is curious. The previous decade witnessed ASEAN’s firming openness to interacting with the UNSC Decision 1325 on WPS and the following WPS agenda, an rising physique of norms aiming to combine gender in all facets associated to peace and safety, with its pillars in prevention of violence and violations of ladies’s human rights, participation in all peace processes in addition to girls’s illustration in formal and casual decision-making in any respect ranges, safety from violence and abuse of ladies’s human rights, and ladies’s equal entry to help distribution mechanisms and companies in aid and restoration.
Coherent with its making WPS a precedence space of cooperation, in 2022 ASEAN adopted a Regional Plan of Motion on WPS (RPA), marking the participation of a 3rd regional entity, after NATO and EU, within the course of. Different high-level commitments embrace the ASEAN Excessive-Stage Dialogue to Advance the Implementation of the Regional Plan of Motion on Ladies, Peace and Safety, regional WPS examine, budgeting and implementation pointers, institution of a delegated WPS data hub, and integration into ASEAN trainings. WPS additionally more and more seems as an essential agenda for ASEAN’s diplomatic engagement with regional and worldwide actors. Amongst ASEAN member states, the Philippines, Indonesia, and most just lately Vietnam, have developed WPS NAPs. Malaysia, the 2025 chairman, additionally indicated an curiosity in advancing WPS.
Criticisms of the WPS agenda itself for being washed down from feminist peace to “making warfare safer for girls” and of ASEAN’s instrumentalization of ‘gender and safety’ to ‘girls and growth’ however, crucial alternatives exist to use ASEAN’s WPS technique to its battle decision and peacebuilding, particularly when the RPA repeatedly pledged to bridge WPS implementation to regional peace and safety priorities as a multilateral and cross-sectoral collaboration course of.
Now that Myanmar isa regional precedence, leveraging ASEAN’s dedication to gender and safety strategically for Myanmar-related agendas, most remarkably the 5PC and Troika mechanism, may imply extra inclusive, constructive, and actionable processes for all 5 key factors. Then why is WPS, gender, and even ‘girls and ladies’, utterly lacking from the 5PC or different essential selections on Myanmar? ASEAN’s founding precept of non-interference and instrumentalist interpretation of ladies’s rights and gender equality in socio-economic dimensions may lend to explanations.
The non-interference tenet units the boundary between ASEAN collective deliberations and ‘inside affairs’ of member states, which has been to this point pronounced in ASEAN’s strategy to Myanma. Coupled with the constructed connections between gender affairs and nationwide illustration or home affairs prevalent in lots of ASEAN international locations, violence towards girls as a weapon of civil battle in Myanmar is a grotesque human rights violation however nonetheless restricted throughout the home affairs sphere.
The socio-economic and non-traditional safety strategy to gender and subsequently to WPS poses the second barrier to participating ASEAN’s present WPS commitments for Myanmar. The interpretation of ladies’s rights, safety and safety in socio-economic dimensions is welcomed because it expands the slender definition of violence and insecurity, however these points shouldn’t be confined as socio-economic and excluded from political and strategic affairs.
Nevertheless, being a regional plan that extends gender-responsive provisions to international locations and populations throughout ASEAN by way of inter-governmental cooperation, the RPA has its advantageous standing as readily consensus-based, one other essential cornerstone of ASEAN’s decision-making. And this consensus is essential that even inside nationwide boundaries, gender, peace, and safety are points with regional implications that every one members have a stake in, an analogous grounding to Myanmar stability being essential to regional stability.
Constructing upon these obstacles and alternatives inside ASEAN institutionally, what may the guarantees on gender carry to an answer for Myanmar? Most significantly, mobilising the regional motion plan and a world momentum for WPS opens a further channel to speak and act on the state of affairs in Myanmar within the area and different multilateral fora that WPS is mentioned, for higher humanitarian help, safety, visibility and accountability, and significant participation of civil society actors.
The pillars of Safety and Aid & Restoration could be leveraged for targeted discussions and planning for defense from sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and provision of needs-specific humanitarian help to girls and ladies/males and boys (ASEAN’s gender discourse has but recognised nonbinary genders) of various age, location, vulnerability, and socio-political position, all throughout the 5PC framework with its specific designation for the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Help on Catastrophe Administration (AHA Centre) to ship support.
Certainly, AHA Centre could be the one physique allowed in formally, nevertheless it wants to not be stand-alone in help planning when ASEAN has additionally different devoted establishments, such because the ASEAN Fee on the Promotion and Safety of the Rights of Ladies and Youngsters (ACWC) and the ASEAN Well being Cluster (AHC), for coordinating inclusive meals and medical help. Broadening the participation of devising our bodies for Myanmar-oriented support additionally means extra platforms for particular person establishments and member states with related gender and WPS experience to contribute financially or technically, and for civil society actors with rapport with these our bodies and supporting states to make clear on-the-ground wants and expectations. Constructing on an more and more amplified international dialogue on WPS and disarmament, participating the WPS agenda is also an efficient software for prepared member states to name for intra-ASEAN motion for arms embargo and elimination of economic companies that economically gasoline the army regime, not less than strategically within the title of curbing violence towards girls, youngsters, and different weak populations.
If ASEAN is to take a extra energetic position in paving the way in which for post-military dialogue and restoring stability within the nation, the pillars of participation and prevention within the WPS RPA may develop into important.
ASEAN’s Joint Assertion to advertise WPS referred to as upon all member states to “encourage the combination of gender views in all battle prevention initiatives and techniques and make sure the full participation of ladies in peace processes, resembling battle prevention and post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation processes”. If the 5PC is to genuinely decide up on that dedication, its designations on mediation and dialogue want to make sure the illustration of ladies’s rights and justice from all related events and gender-specific issues. With this deliberation, when chairing or member states enter communications with completely different stakeholders in Myanmar’s civil battle bilaterally or by way of ASEAN, safety and gender-responsive humanitarian help for now in addition to gendered visions of peace, safety, and justice for the longer term are constructive points that opposition, ethnic and grassroot actors throughout conflict-affected areas would have the capability to work on. The appointed Particular Envoy as the point of interest with completely different Myanmar actors ought to take into account devoted and significant consultations with feminist activists, girls’s teams and gender-focused civil society and support actors throughout ethno-religious traces.
Myanmar could possibly be a testing floor for ASEAN’s WPS commitments and capability throughout the outlined boundaries of non-interference and consensus, not just for bringing life to the 5PC dormancy but additionally trialling the ‘ASEAN-way’ of doing gender and non-traditional safety. Strategic engagement from a WPS angle with influential ASEAN and regional actors with present interactions or acceptance for the gender and safety agenda for Myanmar is a pathway to demonstrating ASEAN decision and reaffirming discourse localisation management and company. And what if, with a consensus-based WPS plan, higher consistency on Myanmar and inter-stake test and steadiness could be stricken?
ASEAN member states host an more and more vibrant CSO community engaged on gender, humanitarian motion and human safety as vocal advocates, first responders, and defenders, usually using the WPS as a crucial worldwide and ASEAN software to name for motion and accountability in regional humanitarian affairs. The RPA’s willpower to interact with civilian society actors now presents an opportune second for bridging the sector with some stage of ASEAN decision-making, particularly by way of WPS-based networking and collaborative advocacy. If ASEAN and member states are to maintain Myanmar seen in a world agenda amid far-reaching support ebbs from US and European institutional donors, a collaborative platform with CSOs may complement its transversally worldwide and native nature and wider rhetorical acknowledgement.
As Myanmar’s civil warfare enters a fourth yr, and ASEAN member states overview the 5PC, modern, inclusive methods to accountability must be thought of for shifting the agenda and implementation ahead. The WPS agenda is admittedly discounted from its progressive feminist genesis, however it’s one with institutional endorsement and civil society engagement. It opens some preliminary doorways. There are strategic and discursive advantages for ASEAN to combine its WPS equipment in facilitating the Myanmar resolution—it honours ASEAN’s promise of ladies’s safety and participation in political and safety spheres, hones its ‘girls and gender’ popularity, and sustains ASEAN decision-making with specialised civil society experience whereas avoiding having to problem the regional entity’s founding ideas—and for individuals in want throughout Myanmar, be it concrete cross-border help or the continued talks of their battle.
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