Weary of Myanmar\u2019s elite-driven peace process, some communities in Karen State are trying something different.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tShona Loong<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t27 May, 2019\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/em><\/p>\n Reimaging the peacebuilding agenda: suggestions for CSOs and donors<\/strong><\/p>\n While the return of the Rajapaksas to power and the government\u2019s roll-back of its Geneva commitments creates myriad challenges for CSOs, this policy brief suggests it may also provide an opportunity to reflect on and reimagine the peacebuilding agenda. This includes the campaign for justice for war crimes in which CSOs and donors have heavily invested since the end of the war.<\/p>\n The report makes several suggestions about what this reimagining could entail. First, there is potential to broaden the scope of \u201cjustice\u201d beyond prosecutions for wartime human rights violations in order to encompass urgent past and present injustices experienced by a range of marginalised communities. It might also involve paying more attention to the structural dimensions of injustice, including how institutions and political systems in Sri Lanka create the conditions for the abuse of power and for anti-minority sentiment. Donors and civil society activists will also need to reflect on the power imbalances and inequalities that pervade their own relationships. The question of who gets to define the peacebuilding agenda, and whose voice is heard, is critical.<\/p>\n There are several practical ways in which donors could support Sri Lankan civil society over the next five years. First, they could support conversations about a reimagined peacebuilding agenda. They could also help to amplify the voices of smaller civil society groups and help find avenues for these groups to speak for themselves. They could also help to promote conversations amongst different ethnic communities and across different geographic regions. Expressions of international solidarity for groups in the North and the East are also essential. Donors could help to create safe spaces for civil society groups to come together and, when COVID-restrictions permit, undertake regular visits to the North and the East, which may help to keep a check on more extreme forms of surveillance and abuse. Importantly, this support needs to be offered with a long-term time horizon in mind.<\/p>\n Ultimately, recent developments in Sri Lanka provide an important lesson on the need to take a long-term and less linear perspective on peacebuilding. The Yahapalanaya regime might have seen a relaxing of some of the more extreme forms of surveillance and militarisation of the previous government, but donors and civil society actors were perhaps too quick to assume that the regime change would lead to more substantive transformation. Given the victor\u2019s peace, we are likely to see the further entrenchment of illiberal peacebuilding, at least in the short term.<\/p>\n The post The Rajapaksa regime: navigating the victor’s peace<\/a> appeared first on New Mandala<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on New Mandala<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The climate of increased repression is having a chilling effect on CSOs (civil society organisations), especially those with a human rights focus.<\/p>\n The post The Rajapaksa regime: navigating the victor\u2019s peace<\/a> appeared first on New Mandala<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8597,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7787],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8597"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318124"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318187,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318124\/revisions\/318187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}