Chronicles of a Norm for Sale: Norm Entrepreneurship in the Myanmar NCA Negotiations

Abstract

This chapter provides granular empirical analysis on just how NGO mediators promoted inclusivity to the negotiating parties in Myanmar. Based on the my framework of assessing normative agency, I forward an empirical take on (1) how NGO mediators interpret the meaning of inclusivity based on their own self-conceptions and normative socializations and frame them to the negotiating parties; (2) how NGO mediators engage in a set of mediation and knowledge production practices to intentionally promote their interpretation of inclusivity to the parties; and (3) how the negotiating parties in the Myanmar NCA process interpreted and accepted the inclusivity norm.

6.1 Introduction

After describing the peace architecture of the NCA negotiations, or the “site” for where NGO mediators actively promote inclusivity to the negotiating parties, I illustrate how NGO mediators framed inclusivity as a salient norm to the EAGs and the government negotiating team. Because of the “homegrown” nature of the peace process and Myanmar’s aversion to public, formal mediation by external actors, private peacemaking actors such as NGO mediators were able to fill the third-party vacuum and work directly with the parties in the form of assisted negotiation. Especially in the crucial days of early process design in a political sensitive environment where trust was low, NGO mediators gained access because of their political flexibility and technical expertise. I discuss how the inclusivity norm was framed as a salient norm to both the EAGs and the government negotiating team. Through local agents on both sides, discourse around inclusivity entered into important moments in negotiations: the formation of the NCCT as an unprecedented ethnic alliance, and the decision and acceptance of the top leaders of the Myanmar government to accept negotiations from a single bloc of EAGs. In this chapter, I also analyze the agency of the Myanmar negotiators as agents of norm promotion themselves, and how interactions between them and NGO mediators build congruence, but fundamentally change the meaning and use of the inclusivity norm throughout their interactions. This is where the NGO mediators start to lose their agency and the path of diffusion of the inclusivity norm. These chapters are based on empirical analysis conducted with 109 interview respondents working in and on the NCA negotiations, mostly with national peace process actors themselves at the heart of the process, as well as international NGO mediators and analysts. I do not describe the activities of specific NGO mediators and peace process actors in order to protect the identity of respondents in the context of the February 2021 coup.¹

6.2 The “Homegrown” NCA Process in Myanmar: A Niche for NGO Mediators and Private Diplomacy

The necessity of informality as pre-requisite for a parties’ mandate in the Myanmar case underscores the centrality of NGO-legitimacy and its role in being accepted by the parties over other types of mediators that may have formal status or more leverage. Due to the lack of formal or official political mandates often afforded to UN, regional organizations or state-mandated mediators, NGO mediators in Myanmar redefined the notion of mandate as “entry point” and drew their normative framework on inclusivity rather from the parties’ and donors mandate. This section illustrates how NGO mediators in Myanmar entered into the Myanmar peace process and the conditions under which they were “accepted” by the negotiating parties. A large part of their acceptance by the negotiating parties is attributed to their nature as private, informal actors that were more appealing than more robust or formal international intervention.

The involvement of international third parties in Myanmar’s peace process is limited (South 2014) due in part to a combination of the “indigenous,” home-grown nature of the process and a general reluctance to allow outside intervention (ibidem, 253). Firstly, and with some notable exceptions,² the space for international engagement and support for the peace process in the country was severely limited under the military regime. Furthermore, after the 8888 Uprising, exiled Burmese nationals campaigned relentlessly at the United Nations, the European Union and other international platforms for a tripartite dialogue³ with limited success, save for severely tarnishing the military regime’s international reputation. Under these circumstances, international political involvement was not focused on the ethnic peace process but on the campaign for democracy and human rights writ large in the context of an authoritarian regime.

The ethnic peace process only became prioritized as an agenda item for the international community after Thein Sein’s political reforms opened up the country to the rest of the world. The peace process became an important transitional process, simultaneously unfolding with the political and economic opening (Alluri et al. 2014). This created a “gold rush” (ibidem) of international embassies, donor organizations, non-governmental organizations and business actors waiting to sell their services in the “political marketplace” of ideas (de Waal 2014). The ongoing peace process was somewhat of an exception to this gold rush. The role of the international actors in the peace process was and remains limited, as “negotiations are undertaken between the government and ethnic armed organizations with no significant external mediation and only limited international facilitation” (Petrie and South 2014). This marks Myanmar’s peace process as unique vis-à-vis other peace processes in the region that have been led or facilitated by external third party acting through an official mediation mandate.⁴

While external mediation was not accepted by the negotiating parties, internal mediation took place between representatives on each side of the negotiating table and their respective constituencies. This mandated mediation took place through a national institution named the Myanmar Peace Center. The MPC was led by the government’s then-Chief Negotiator Aung Min. His was the only formal mandate given by the government. The MPC took on roles that a traditional mediator and their team would undertake: it coordinated all peace activities, ranging from ceasefire negotiations and implementation, to peace negotiations in political dialogue (BNI 2013). It was also tasked with coordinating assistance in conflict affected areas, as well as engaging in outreach and public diplomacy. The MPC was also mandated to act as a “one-stop service” for all donor governments and international nongovernmental organizations that aimed to support the peace process (ibidem). Such a comprehensive mandate in a powerful, albeit contested organization⁵ left no choice but for international actors to take a backseat, supportive role (Min Zaw Oo 2014).

Despite the clear ownership of the mediation and negotiation space by the negotiating parties, international support for the process was marked by a high level of international donor interest. The Peace Donor Support Group (PDSG)⁶ was established in 2012 and played a large role in the creation of the MPC. Since then, funding organizations such as the Peace Support Fund (PSF)⁷ and the large-scale multi-donor Joint Peace Fund (JPF)⁸ have also embraced this particular role. While a number of peace initiatives from international organizations were already operating on a highly discreet level, the first “high-profile international intervention” (Petrie and South 2014) was the Myanmar Peace Support Initiative (MPSI), which was created in 2012 when the Norwegian government was asked by Aung Min to help support the peace process. The MPSI, initially seen as a funding mechanism “to answer the needs of armed groups and civil society” (EPLO 2013), took on the more political role of undertaking small-scale trust-building projects around ceasefires, or playing a facilitative role in locally owned and locally run peace initiatives. The MPSI was the first initiative to have a mandate from the parties, as they were asked by the government to build confidence in the nascent ceasefires brokered between 2012 and 2013 (Min Zaw Oo 2014). Although contested by some, the MPSI-model became a blueprint for peace process support in the years to follow. As South and Petrie (2014), report, “since then, a number of other governments and donors became involved” (2014: 183). To respect sovereignty, the fiercely defended “homegrown process,” and the norms of the ASEAN Way, NGO mediators conducted NGO mediator practices under adjacent labels like “dialogue support,” “facilitation,” “technical support” and other non-threatening and non-confrontational terms, deliberately avoiding the word “mediation.”⁹ Based on the relative success of initiatives like the MPSI and EBO,¹⁰ other mediation organizations entered into the Myanmar context through donor funding, working directly with the EAGs, working with the MPC, or a combination of the three.

Between 2011 and 2015, international donors funded a large range of peace support activities, conducted directly through informal back-channels, through international facilitators or by international nongovernmental organizations specializing in conflict resolution. Due to the mushrooming number of international peace process support actors operating in Yangon and in ethnic states, the need for coordination was addressed. In response to this need, the International Peace Support Group (IPSG) was created to coordinate activities and share information on the peace process. The IPSG had begun as a loose, relatively ad hoc configuration of consultants and NGOs who had been working and observing the country for many years. They used the IPSG to share information about the quickly moving peace process. As the founder of the IPSG recounted, in January 2012, they convened 12 representatives of NGOs and initiatives, including: EBO, CPCS, HD Centre, ICG, Peace Nexus, Transnational Institute, and MPSI. According to one respondent, it was only at this meeting that they learned that Aung Min had asked all of them separately to directly support the MPC and EAGs on the peace process. Given the sheer number of NGOs working with the same stakeholders, they felt that sharing information and loosely coordinating activities was imperative. In the five years between 2012 and 2017, the IPSG had morphed into an organization of over 70 organizations all working “in” or “on” the peace process.¹¹

The mechanisms and organizations highlighted here only scratch the surface of the complex landscape of international peace support (South 2014; Baechtold 2015). Against this informal and ad hoc process “in the context of limited international involvement” (South 2014, 182) and high level of complexity, the peace process space has become decentralized and the lack of a central official mediator has created a vacuum filled by a range of actors. Interestingly, this vacuum of international mediation and the relegation of would-be power mediators to donor roles carved out a space, albeit extremely limited, for peace process support actors and private diplomacy organizations in the peace process (Jones et al. 2021).

NGO mediators gained their mandate from the negotiating parties largely because the parties felt that they needed technical expertise and political advice in designing the peace process, and wanted to limit robust international involvement. In 2011, the Thein Sein administration and some of the more influential EAGs such as the KNU were ready to enter into negotiations, as one of the key early drivers of the peace process wrote in his memoir: “Actually the armed conflict that had lasted so long due to different ideological preferences made both sides [weary] and exhausted. Besides, they do not wish to handover their legacy to the next generation” (U Soe Thane 2017, 37). In this context, the Thein Sein administration issued a Call for Peace (Su Mon Thazin Aung 2015, 29) on 18 August 2011. At the time of Thein Sein’s peace call, the government “recognized 16 groups in total to be part of the new ceasefire process” (Min Zaw Oo 2014, 8). Brokering peace in the country was one of the Thein Sein administration’s reform priorities and the conciliatory language of the “Call for Peace” made it clear that the government was “extending the olive branch” and was serious about talks. The Call for Peace text invited armed groups to negotiate a ceasefire without pre-conditions, specifically dropping the problematic requirement to integrate into the government’s border guard force (Bertrand et al. 2020).

The government then set off on a plan to bring in the EAGs with an ambitious timeline: broker ceasefires with all EAGs by the end of 2013 as a pre-cursor to political talks the following year, and endorse all agreements by 2015 (BNI 2013, 38). Key Myanmar politicians, businessmen, academics and scholars responsible for pushing the process forward were also at the helm of designing the process in its early days.¹² These actors felt that they required external support and elicited help from private actors for technical peace process design. The government’s plan centered on three phases: ceasefires at the state level, confidence building and political dialogue at the union level, and the creation of new political parties to bring the EAGs into mainstream politics. This required brokering ceasefires first and foremost, which seemed a near impossible task given the low levels of trust and the weight of history. Thein Sein appointed several leaders to helm this process.¹³ Aung Min and his team took on the responsibility of operationalizing the ambitious timeline for peace, and were able to broker bilateral ceasefires with 14 EAGs in the first two years of the process. The success and momentum of Aung Min’s team not just in brokering ceasefires but in achieving a modicum of trust with some of the EAGs led to the perception of Aung Min as a “mediator” figure, or as close as it gets to such a figure in the Myanmar context.¹⁴ He had a direct line to Thein Sein, and was given the highest executive mandate in leading the government peace team.¹⁵

In a next step, the Thein Sein government created two bodies with different functions and different members. The first was the Union Peace Working Committee (UPWC) chaired by the then-Vice President Mauk Kham, which consisted of 52 state-level ministers and regional commanders and was charged with doing most of the leg work in the process. The second was a union-level peace team called the Union Peace Central Committee (UPCC), which was chaired by Thein Sein and included 11 high-level government members from both the Hluttaw and the Tatmadaw, which was created to deal with decision-making at the highest level.¹⁶ The engagement of high-level representatives in this body is further evidence, of the seriousness with which the government sought peace. Over the first two years of the process, momentum was gained steadily as the government formalized individual ceasefires with the groups with which the relationships had previously only been governed by verbal “gentlemen’s agreements” (Min Zaw Oo 2014). The government also brokered ceasefires for the first time with groups that never previously signed such, and new ones with groups, with whom previous ceasefires had broken down (Keenan 2015).

As previously mentioned, to support the ongoing peace process the Thein Sein government opened the MPC in July 2012 by Presidential Decree with a mandate to assist the UPCC and UPWC. Due to Aung Min’s perception by many national peace process actors as a mediator¹⁷ between the Tatmadaw and the EAGs, the MPC consequentially took on the identity of a mediating organization for peace initiatives. This included a wide range of mediation and peacebuilding activities, from providing substantial technical assistance to the government peace team, to acting as a gateway for international involvement in the process. It was a massive technical endeavor to design such a complex and multifaceted peace process amidst a political transition. Therefore, the MPC appointed an unprecedented number of civilians allowed back from exile, as well as policy advocates, academics and government ministers:¹⁸

The NCA process departed from past attempts at brokering peace, as it put the Tatmadaw and the government in separate roles. In previous iterations of peace processes, the Tatmadaw would negotiate on behalf of the military government and armed forces at the same time, and enter into “gentlemen’s agreements” with the EAGs directly. By contrast, in 2011 the quasi-civilian government acted as a mediating organization between the two key stakeholders (armed actors) of the process: the Tatmadaw and the EAGs (Su Mon Thazin Aung 2015, 26). On the ethnic side, complex inter-ethnic arrangements were formed after the Call to Peace, eventually resulting in the UNFC. During the first phase of the process, the government attempted to broker ceasefires bilaterally as per previous iterations of the peace process. Because of the diffuse and complex nature of ethnic politics, and funding asymmetries between the government and EAGs, an inter-ethnic alliance or institution was much more difficult to set up in the same vein. This lack of institutionalized support to the EAGs contributed to the high levels of bilateral interaction with international actors. Despite attempts to market the MPC as an institutional resource for both parties, it was eventually viewed largely as a government apparatus.

The MPC also played the role of conduit for international involvement as well as “neutralizing”¹⁹ the “gold rush” (Baechtold 2015) of external actors vying to play a role. No NGOs were officially invited to support the process in the forms of memoranda of understanding (MOU), an important aspect of Myanmar business culture, or paperwork. According to some respondents, having an MOU would actually make their work more difficult or laborious due to high levels of bureaucracy that accompanied having a formal MOU.²⁰ However, while NGO mediators were not officially invited to support the peace process, they were informally asked by Aung Min to provide support in a private manner, as “the MPC was a governmental institution and could not directly get the views of the [EAG]s,²¹ whereas experts could meet the EAGs and exchange views. These views could be shared to bring about a solution” (Aung Naing Oo 2018, 86).

Therefore, being asked directly by Aung Min to support him and the MPC’s efforts (as the original IPSG members were asked in the example above) can be analyzed as gaining the parties’ mandate (Nathan 2017) or acceptance to intervene in the process. These NGO mediators were asked by Aung Min to support the process in a range of ways, depending on the specific profile of the NGO mediator. The tasks they were asked to perform ranged from acting as a “go-between” between the government and EAGs early on, to specific technical support in process design, bespoke political advice on the process, and technical and financial resources. As Aung Naing Oo wrote in his memoir, the MPC asked “international experts” to provide advice on ceasefires, negotiations, security issues and peace process design. Mediators also filled an important resource gap; as “a result of how time-consuming and tiring the peace negotiations were […] negotiators did not have time to do research and therefore they relied on the research of international experts to advance the negotiations” (Aung Naing Oo 2018, 86).

6.3 NGO Mediators Frame Inclusivity to the Negotiating Parties? (2012–2013)

Based on their own interpretation(s), NGO mediators frame the inclusivity norm as a salient topic in the negotiations and wider peace process. The framing of an external norm calls attention or creates issues by using language that names, interprets or dramatizes the norm (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 897). When framing is successful, these new frames “resonate with broader public understandings” and are “adopted as new ways of talking about and understanding issues” (ibidem). This section discusses how NGO mediators frame the inclusivity norm to the government negotiators from the MPC secretariat and to the EAG negotiators in the NCCT. I discuss how the inclusivity norm was framed as a salient norm in the initial stages of the peace process design. I also discuss how inclusivity was framed (or not framed) to actors not at the negotiating table. NGO mediators also promoted the inclusivity norm to non-armed actors such as civil society but did not promote the inclusivity norm to the Tatmadaw.

6.3.1 Framing Inclusivity to the EAGs

Framing the inclusivity norm as salient in the early design stages of the NCA was a means for NGO mediators to introduce the norm in the Myanmar context. NGO mediators framed inclusivity as a salient norm to “local agents” (Acharya 2004) on the EAG side. These local agents were EAG representatives that were former political exiles and often educated abroad. They communicated in English and built congruence between external ideas and the existing normative frameworks in Myanmar. Establishing the exogeneity of the inclusivity discourse is essential to providing counter-factual evidence for the salience of the inclusivity norm in the Myanmar peace process. This exogeneity is established by comparing the design for the NCA process with that of the National Convention process leading up to the 2008 Constitution. As one respondent stated, there was no inclusive political dialogue in the latter process, just “purely military to military”²² confrontations that included no dialogue and no mechanisms for consultation: the “voice of the people is not involved, not heard.”²³ In contrast, the broad national dialogue framework produced in 2012 was designed to give everyone a stake in the process, as one respondent noted: “that is what I call inclusivity.”²⁴ Many EAG respondents first remember the word or phrase inclusivity introduced in 2012 during the development of a founding document called the Comprehensive Ceasefire and National Framework for Political Dialogue.²⁵ During the drafting of this document, several EAG respondents recalled inviting two Swiss representatives, a seasoned mediator from British NGO mediator Inter Mediate, representatives from CPCS and “those kind of people”²⁶ to conduct small informal workshops. As one EAG respondent recalls: the Myanmar government knew these NGO mediators were “[…] informal, or I don’t know how to call it, but they are not really mandated.”²⁷ While the notions of inclusion and exclusion in ethnic politics are latent political issues in Myanmar, the discourse around inclusion as an important fundamental in a legitimate and sustainable peace process began during this stage of the NCA process.

First, inclusivity was framed as the importance of including all stakeholders, armed or non-armed. NGO mediators become involved in two crucial regards. Speaking to EAG representatives that were involved from the very beginning of the process, several of these respondents cite the participation of a process design expert from the German NGO mediator and a seasoned mediator seconded by the Swiss government:

That was the beginning of […], we invited the international experts to help us. As far as my engagement and my knowledge is concerned, the first person which we had invited was [name redacted]. I think you know him. So that was May 2012 [when] the first expatriate we had invited came and talked about the concept of this national dialogue. Before we had an Ethnic Peace Plan, that’s what we laid down in 2012 Feb, [we had] the working group for ethnic coordination. That was our own kind of peace plan. But later it was developed because we invited [name redacted] to explain the concept of national dialogue, the different types, and the anatomy of a national dialogue. And ever since, there were several workshops and discussions. Then finally we have produced this.²⁸

The design of the overall process was meant to be inclusive in the broadest sense. The peace process would not only include military actors negotiating another version of the existing Constitution (as in past iterations of the peace process), but non-armed actors such as political parties and civil society actors would be involved. However, this conflated the logic of a broad national dialogue process with the design of a ceasefire agreement, which are highly technical and normally involve armed actors (Sakhong 2012).

Second, inclusivity was framed by EAG representatives working with international actors as a way to encourage ethnic unity. In the first phase of the peace process, a majority of the EAGs convened to discuss the Comprehensive Ceasefire and National Framework for Political Dialogue.²⁹ During these ethnic summits, the EAGs felt that bilateral ceasefires would have “no mechanism whatsoever for monitoring or for implementation.”³⁰ Many EAGs also felt that a political dialogue space was needed to monitor the progress of the peace negotiations outside of the Hluttaw. Therefore, despite the long histories of political and military alliances fraught by inter- and intra-ethnic tensions, the EAGs decided to answer Thein Sein’s Call to Peace not as individual EAGs, but as a single negotiating bloc, the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordinating Team (NCCT).

The NCCT was created in November 2013, when EAGs not only accepted the government’s invitation to negotiate, but organized an unprecedented summit of EAGs in Laiza, Kachin State, to discuss the process. At what would become known as the Laiza Conference, 16 of the 17 EAGs present formed the NCCT to represent the EAGs at the formal talks with the government and play a facilitation and technical role in the peace process. The NCCT was created in parallel to the UNFC to bolster the momentum of ethnic unity. However, one EAG respondent criticized the prospect of true ethnic unity:

So all these existent alliances have never, ever been inclusive (laughs). That’s the problem, huh? From the beginning. Because we have not been able to see what you call, established unified, ALL ethnic armed groups in one alliance, or one coordination body. It has never existed, and I am 100% sure that it will never exist because it’s not possible.³¹

Not all EAGs in the UNFC were represented in the NCCT. This discrepancy would later become a key point of contention in the negotiations. While the government did view the UNFC as a dialogue partner, it did not view them as a ceasefire group or coalition (Min Zaw Oo 2014, 14). Nevertheless, after the Laiza Conference, the NCCT put forward an 11-point draft agreement to serve as the basis for discussions and the outline for the NCA (ICG 2015). One EAG respondent cautioned that the NCCT was not a political alliance, but a coordination team:

The kinds of coordination, just a loose coordination working together on the same purpose or objective would be an ideal, for better, a working relationship, better than having, and that can be military to military, the Wa, KIO, Northern Alliance, they work together. But inclusiveness of all the armed groups, political alliance, whatever is not possible […] NCCT was not an alliance. It was a coordination team. That kind of coordinating mechanism worked for us. That kind of coordination worked for us. So 16 out of 21, coordinating, collectively negotiating with the government.³²

Buoyed by the formation of the NCCT, the government threw its weight into creating a peace architecture that would support the peace process and the negotiations. The government created its own team to negotiate directly with the NCCT, led by Aung Min and his technical ceasefire team in the MPC. The basis for the discussion was the EAG-developed Comprehensive Ceasefire and National Framework for Political Dialogue.³³ that was designed with the technical support of individual international experts on ceasefires and national dialogues.³⁴ This framework was accepted by the government and the first round of negotiations began in November 2013.

6.3.2 Framing Inclusivity to the Government

The inclusivity norm was brought to the government side through the EAGs. EAGs introduced the inclusivity discourse to the government side through the Comprehensive Ceasefire and National Framework for Political Dialogue document that became a base for discussion in the negotiations for both sides. This document was then brought to high-level decision-makers such as Aung Min and fellow minister Soe Thane, an influential design-maker in the process.³⁵ As previously mentioned, Aung Min had assembled a team of experts, former political exiles and “re-pats” who acted as “local agents” (Acharya 2004) and built congruence between the inclusivity and the existing normative frameworks on the government side. These local agents created connections between external narratives around inclusivity and the reality in the Myanmar context. An important flashpoint around how the norm of inclusivity entered into the government’s discourse was the decision to turn the 14 bilateral ceasefires that had been recently signed (Min Zaw Oo 2014) with most of the influential armed groups into an “all-inclusive” nationwide agreement. This decision was unprecedented, as previous attempts at peace only consisted of bilateral ceasefires agreements between the government and individual groups. This government’s decision serves as evidence for the influence of an exogenous norm or idea (e.g. inclusivity) affecting the behavior of the government actors. In other words, the inclusivity norm could be one of the factors behind the logic that turning hard-won bilateral ceasefires into a nationwide one was a good idea, despite its inherent and obvious risks. In a conversation with Soe Thane, he recalled a trusted advisor first telling him about the word all-inclusiveness, a concept that he understands meaning having a holistic view of the whole process. In discussions with the government secretariat, the demand for an “all-inclusive” agreement came from the EAG side around the time of the formation of the NCCT. Many of Aung Min’s close advisors on the secretariat had advised against all-inclusiveness, when KIO leader General Gun Maw asked Aung Min if the EAGs could convene in Laiza (forming the NCCT). As one advisor recounted, “The demand came from the armed groups—it wasn’t my idea! I was against the idea from the beginning, but ironically, I had to implement it.”³⁶

Another secretariat team member recounted the first time they heard the word inclusivity, in the context of the Laiza Conference and the formation of the NCCT:

And they bring up this one document that is already prepared about 4 or 5 years ago that is called the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement. Actually that document is not a new one, and that document is already prepared by the different exile groups and ethnic armed groups 5 years ago. Some parts are from more than a decade before, so they bring it up, and they say, they are going to find out some kind of document in here. And we will sign together, and that document will become the founding document, the cornerstone of all the peace process and political dialogue process. And that is already everything. And whoever signs this document have a chance to become part of the political dialogue process, and this is where inclusivity lies on.³⁷

The government’s reticence stemmed from the fear of more armed groups being formed—or splintering off because of inter- and intra-ethnic politics—and demanding a seat at the table.³⁸ The government interpreted all-inclusiveness as a “power-based ethnic alliance”³⁹ from a strategic perspective. So when the EAGs brought forth a proposition to negotiate a ceasefire as a single bloc, the government’s acceptance of this proposal signals an acceptance of the inclusivity discourse. The government negotiators interpreted the inclusivity in their own way. According to respondents from the government negotiating team, “[Inclusivity] wasn’t really a question until the offer from Thein Sein for armed groups, and “armed” being the operative word here. So it referred to who would be included in the talks. The government recognized 14–16 groups. The EAOs recognized different groups.”⁴⁰

The differences between the EAG and government interpretations of inclusivity were not openly addressed, despite inclusivity becoming used more frequently over the course of the negotiations. According to one respondent on the government negotiating team, there was even a debate among the negotiating groups whether the term, “all-inclusivity” or “inclusivity” would be used.⁴¹ According to another government negotiating team member, the idea was that a nationwide agreement would be a “process framework” to get politically and militarily relevant EAGs to the negotiation table. The EAGs, however, viewed inclusivity as a process framework to get all armed groups at the table.

In terms of exogeneity, an MPC secretariat team member compared the presence of inclusivity discourse in the NCA process to the absence of the discourse during the National Convention process:

They say everyone is represented at the Convention, but they never used inclusivity as a word. So this is how they structured in the previous national convention in the previous regime. So I remember the first time I heard about the Burmese word of inclusivity and participation is around 2010, 2011, when we started opening up and NGOs coming in, and this is part of the exercise of the civil participation project, this is where it is coming up.⁴²

To the government negotiators, the discourse around inclusivity was more procedural than political from the outset. The government decided that the NCA process would in fact be “all-inclusive,” but only pertaining to groups who had signed to the NCA process in August 2011 during the Call to Peace. One government respondent described the government’s somewhat contradictory interpretation of all-inclusiveness:

The government don’t have any idea of what inclusivity means. They say that it is very simple. We will make up a form, whoever can sign it, they have a criteria, very simple: from this day, if you want to participate as part of the process, you can be part of the process. But after that day, if you are just form after that day, you are no longer considered part of the dialogue process […] Yes, it is procedural, very procedural. They cut off the 1 day, they call for the Peace on 2011, so from 2011, everyone considered as dialogue partner, but after 2011, no, no.⁴³

The government’s interpretation of all-inclusiveness as “selective procedure” was also described by another respondent, a prominent Myanmar analyst: “so this is where, how the government considered inclusivity or not. This is very based on the procedural process.”⁴⁴ In sum, the government’s interpretation of the inclusivity norm was pragmatic and procedural, but not normative. To the government, inclusiveness referred to the political constellation of armed groups who could participate in the NCA negotiations. While the government’s interpretation and the EAG’s interpretation are diametrically opposed, the discourse around the norm became salient among both parties. Both the EAGs and the government used the terminology and discourse around inclusivity in the initial set up and design of the process. Through a set of local agents, NGO mediators framed the inclusivity norm to the EAGs who then brought the discourse to the government. To both negotiating parties, inclusivity refers to armed groups rather than non-armed groups. And because the government and Tatmadaw are distinct entities, the Tatmadaw had their own interpretation of inclusivity. The Tatmadaw took a more hardline stance towards which armed groups were “allowed” to be included in the negotiations.

Because there was no trajectory to the early peace architecture of the MPC, when the national ceasefire came onto the agenda, the extent to which this government position was “stimulated by what they knew where the attitudes of the Tatmadaw is not clear. One respondent wondered whether the Tatmadaw co-opted and instrumentalized the discourse around inclusivity for their own purposes:

It’s like, the Tatmadaw has cleverly thrown a ball of wool to a kitten to play with to keep them very busy for 2 years. So busy that they had no time to consider actually, then what should we say, the important technicalities of implementation of ceasefire. Very important. Nevertheless, they were sucked into it, and during the 2 year process, of course it’s not that nothing came out of it.⁴⁵

The respondent also mentioned that the Tatmadaw can instrumentalize discourse around norms for strategic purposes:

We see the way the Tatmadaw were strategizing back in the time of the establishment of the national convention, struggling to see, my view, military regimes know that they are not likely to last forever. They will have to make a transformation some point in time. The fact that they know it is reflected in the way that they talk about it. They presumably are the ones that shaped the emergence of a new regime, which would allow them to maintain their power behind the façade of legitimacy […] And the façade of the peace process at the same time. But I mean, my own guess is that the peace process means to them, much the same as it means to colonial powers in the past—pacification. I mean, they are not isolated, they are not stupid. They are very serious players in this game, and they hold most of the cards. And they have a great advantage over every other player, in that they know what they want.⁴⁶

One respondent mentioned the incredulity that the Tatmadaw held to the inclusivity discourse:

In Myanmar history, none of the coalitions stood still—a lot of the groups were working on their own interests, a lot of these groups have their own interests, and the Tatmadaw. Tatmadaw was against inclusivity—they are convinced that it wouldn’t happen, their argument is that they have already tried bilaterally and they have succeeded.⁴⁷

The unprecedented decision by the government to extend invitations to talks was met by mistrust by some of the EAGs. To be sure, not all EAGs were immediately keen to do so due to deep-seated mistrust after years of failed negotiations, ceasefires and promises. The government attempted to address such reticence by promoting an “open door policy,”⁴⁸ which entailed that groups that were not ready to sign the NCA at the negotiated date would be free to sign at a later time.

In late 2013, when the government received the Comprehensive Ceasefire and National Framework for Political Dialogue document from the EAGs, they came back to the EAGs with their own draft. According to one EAG respondent,⁴⁹ the new government draft was heavily influenced by the Tatmadaw.⁵⁰ After further negotiations on this document text, both sides agreed that the document would form the basis of a “single text,” which over the next two years and nine rounds of negotiations, would become the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement.

6.3.3 Framing Inclusivity to Actors Outside the Negotiation Table

While the sections above show how inclusivity was framed to the armed actors in the conflict as a salient norm, inclusivity was also promoted by NGO mediators as it pertained to non-armed actors. However, they used a different interpretation of the inclusivity norm: not the participation of all armed groups, but the more cosmopolitan normative imperative of political participation by non-armed groups.

The framing of inclusivity as an important idea was picked up by the Myanmar media. Myanmar media outlets—enjoying the unprecedented ability to report on the peace process—played a large role in framing inclusivity as a key issue in the peace process. For instance, the Myanmar Times published an editorial entitled: “Peace Process Must be Inclusive.”⁵¹ An interview with a longtime international observer and peace practitioner in the Irrawaddy was headlined as, “You Cannot Talk about a Nationwide Ceasefire If You Don’t Include Everyone.”⁵² The UNFC and individual EAGs also used phrasing around inclusivity in media and public statements, for instance: “UNFC Calls for Inclusive Peace,” or “All-Inclusive Ceasefire Needed for Peace, Says CNF Chairman.” Myanmar political analysts also began to use the phrase “inclusiveness” in their reports and briefings. For example, an EBO briefing paper⁵³ stated: “Since February 2011, up to 19 ethnic armed groups are invited and participate in the monthly Working Group for Ethnic Coordination (WGEC) meetings to coordinate their ceasefire negotiations and plan together on how to transform their individual ceasefire talks into a collective political dialogue in an inclusive peace process” (Keenan 2013).

Framing inclusivity as an imperative for an effective and successful peace process in the early days of the process had already begun to put pressure on negotiating parties to include the excluded actors at the peace table. The prerogative for inclusion was initially framed as broad sectors of society becoming directly involved in the NCA process. The modalities under which this would take place, however, were much more contentious. When this norm was picked up and fiercely promoted not only by armed actors, but also by civil society organizations—including women’s organizations and youth groups (all advocating for formal representation and participation in the current peace process)—those designing the framework for negotiations had to address the inclusivity question. A telling example of this is the concurrent discourse ⁵⁴ around women’s participation in the peace process (Muehlenbeck and Palmiano Federer 2016). For instance, the Alliance for Gender in the Peace Process (AGIPP) is a large-scale initiative headed by national women leaders and supported by the international community in Myanmar. ⁵⁵ Since its creation in 2013, it heavily promoted women’s inclusion in the peace process⁵⁶ and used phrasing related to inclusivity and all-inclusiveness⁵⁷ as well. The Civil Society Forum for Peace (CSFoP) organized by national peace NGO the Shalom (Nyein) Foundation also used discourse around civil society’s inclusion in the peace process. The unprecedented prevalence of these discourses in Myanmar society was directly related to the reforms around media freedom, social media use and telecommunications. The discourse around inclusivity and all-inclusiveness on the public Facebook pages of key stakeholders,⁵⁸ and the freedom that the press enjoyed in documenting and analyzing the negotiations, all contributed to the framing of inclusivity as an important norm in the Myanmar peace process.

Due to the “gold rush” of NGO mediators working directly (and often informally) with the parties, coordination among these and all other international business, humanitarian and diplomatic actors working in and on the complex conflict context in Myanmar, proved difficult. Competition for funding resources and access to influential political actors in the process led to conceptual confusion about inclusivity. While the IPSG was set up in 2012 to mitigate this challenge, one of the leaders of the initiative observed that “we all could have done better”⁵⁹ to coordinate and transcend confidentiality, a strongly held norm amongst the epistemic community on mediation. Several interview respondents commented directly on the coordination and competition issue, lamenting that NGO mediators were “in direct competition with each other.”⁶⁰ This competition stemmed from donors and governments working though NGOs bilaterally, who in turn work with the parties bilaterally. The Myanmar peace process context was about “self-regulation and direct engagement with the parties.”⁶¹ Due to the politically sensitive nature of working directly with some EAGs, foreign governments funded NGO mediators to work directly with EAGs: “Overtime, [EAGs] needed more sophisticated resources […]” and so embassies worked with NGO mediators to share the responsibilities.⁶² These conditions led to a high amount of coordination issues between and among NGO mediators and the donors that funded them. For instance, in a private email exchange shared by a former UN official working in Myanmar, NGO mediators clashed over the perception of certain NGO mediators taking credit for the positive outcome of a bilateral negotiation process. According to the respondent who shared the exchange, an NGO mediator miscommunicating their ownership of the process “introduces new unhealthy levels of competition among mediation actors” that is confusing and distracting to national actors [and] as outsiders compete.”⁶³ Additionally, an EAG representative lamented over the competition and the lack of coordination between NGO mediators promoting different interpretations of concepts and norms. This coordination and competition negatively impacted national peace process actors who received “many recommendations from different international experts and NGOs [leading] to confusion.”⁶⁴

6.4 Agency of Local Agents: How Do Negotiating Parties Treat the Inclusivity Norm? (2013–2015)

In the Myanmar case, influential individuals in the NCCT and the MPC acted as local agents, who were credible “insider proponents” with sufficient “discursive influence” (Acharya 2004, 248) to not only accept the inclusivity norm but also constitutively reshape it. These “conditions” are clearly apparent in Aung Min’s closest advisors and key members of the secretariat, as well as some of the leadership in EAGs who represented ethnic communities in the NCCT. These individuals had some or all of the following characteristics: (1) “outside” knowledge and technical expertise of peace processes (they had all spent time abroad gaining a higher education in Western institutions in North America or Europe; were trained in Harvard negotiation style⁶⁵ approaches to mediation and negotiation; and had comparative experiences and knowledge of peace, mediation and negotiation in a range of other contexts) (2) Myanmar nationals who had political clout as former insurgents or political exiles. On the EAG side, these individuals were of paramount importance to introducing the discourse of inclusivity into the initial design of the process. The makeup of the MPC secretariat reflected Aung Min’s unorthodox approach to welcoming outside influence in terms of technical design and expertise. Aung Min’s technical team therefore acted as local agents that created an enabling environment for the introduction and localization of the inclusivity norm.

For norm diffusion to occur, the local agents must want to localize new norms (Acharya 2004, 247). In the context of domestic political changes after decades of military rule, the inclusivity norm provided greater external recognition for both the government and the EAGs. Thein Sein’s government represented a crucial transitional structure for Myanmar’s legitimacy vis-à-vis the international community. The NCA process, a flagship element of the quasi-civilian government’s reform agenda, was important in confirming its legitimacy after decades of pariah status. Touting an inclusive process aligned with the liberal peacebuilding paradigm would result in the widespread external recognition of the NCA as a “success story” and model for peace processes around the world. Indeed, the Thein Sein government originally planned to have the NCA signed in 2014 in a large and celebratory fashion with the United Nations, China and other external partners present.

Similarly, one of the EAGs’ main demands early on in the process was to have a role for international third parties (BNI 2013) in the negotiations. The NCA process was considered by international peace supporters and the Myanmar public as the best chance to end the decades-long conflict because of the cosmopolitan nature of the norm. To one observer, the deeply flawed process was nevertheless “given legitimacy by international norms of inclusivity.”⁶⁶ The NCA was designed to be the precursor to an inclusive national dialogue. After the NCA would be signed by all EAGs, Myanmar’s top decision makers would hold a “Union Peace Conference” envisioned as a follow up to the 1947 Panglong Conferences (see Chap. 4). The Union Peace Conference would culminate in the signing of a Union Peace Accord ratified by the Hluttaw (Sakhong and Twa 2015). Local agents in the MPC and the NCCT grafted the inclusivity norm onto their existing cognitive priors around unity. This negatively impacted non-armed actors that also expected greater participation in the process due to the inclusivity discourse.

6.4.1 EAGs’ Acceptance of the Inclusivity Norm

On the EAG side, the practice of military alliance formation was, according to EAGs, a defense strategy against the Tatmadaw (Keenan 2015). This practice was necessitated under the military regime, but the calculus changed when Thein Sein’s government embarked on an unprecedented wave of reform. EAG leaders understood that the rules of the game were changing. Therefore, while the existing cognitive prior of the “spirit of Panglong” remained strong and legitimate, the practices around the cognitive prior were seen as inadequate to meet the new political landscape. This shift provided motivation for local agents to adapt the normative framework and possibly incorporate new external norms that had “the potential to contribute to the legitimacy and efficacy of extant institutions without undermining them significantly” (Acharya 2004, 251). Thus, EAG leaders played the role of local agents in grafting the inclusivity norm onto the cognitive prior of ethnic unity.

To EAGs acting as local agents, the National Conventions leading up to the 2008 Constitution⁶⁷ that took place under the military regime did not address the needs and perspectives of the Myanmar people.⁶⁸ Reflecting on the fact that the National Convention was not inclusive to them, these local agents envisioned a peace process that would have broad participation. This would mean the inclusion of non-armed actors such as political parties and civil society actors. It would be an inclusive political dialogue that would “become the cornerstone of the peace process and the political dialogue process.”⁶⁹ However, to reach the political dialogue phase of the process, hostilities had to be ended through ceasefire agreements first.

In the early days of the NCA process, the need to adapt the “spirit of Panglong” to the discourse of all-inclusiveness was recognized by local agents within the broader context of the extraordinary reforms that were unfolding in the country (Kyaw Yin Hlaing 2012). With greater media freedoms, the release of political prisoners, economic opening and political engagement taking place rapidly (ibidem), the state of play had changed and entered into uncharted territory. The notion of ethnic unity as a way to combat the divide-and-rule tactics of the military had to be maintained, but also had to adjust to this new political context of reform. This meant that after decades of failed peace processes and fighting, ethnic unity would no longer be simply a military strategy, but a political one. In other words, “since the ethnic conflict is based on a constitutional issue, a much broader political dialogue, including the Tatmadaw, democratic parties and civil society as a whole will be needed.”⁷⁰

The norm of inclusivity, brought to local agents through interaction with NGO mediators, was reinterpreted as the concept of an inclusive national dialogue and subsequently incorporated into their peace process design. External and mainstream understandings of peacebuilding concepts were also brought to the fore through the medium of international experts, workshops, discussions and courses on mediation:

But later it was developed because we invited [name redacted] to explain about the concept of national dialogue, the types of them, the anatomy of a national dialogue. And ever since, there are several workshops, discussions and then finally we have produced this, what we call Comprehensive Ceasefire and National Framework for Political Dialogue and along the way, we had mostly invited [name redacted] so even [name redacted] also attended, we attended mediation courses and all that. Technical assistance to EAOs and then another international actor at the time that was involved was this Intermediate from the UK and [name redacted] and those kind of people. So there might have been some others like NGOs and CPCS who have done small workshops here, but the collective body NCCT I think [name redacted] and [name redacted] seems to have involved, so it was ethnic armed group’s invitation.⁷¹

Several respondents referenced working on this framework with an international consultant working on behalf of an NGO mediator. This provides further evidence that the presence of international actors, including NGO mediators provided explicit guidance on peace process design. The interaction with NGO mediators may serve as evidence to inclusivity featuring as a “key basic principle” in the “Common Position of the Ethnic Armed Organizations on the Nationwide Ceasefire” (Keenan 2013). Further evidence of EAGs grafting inclusivity onto the cognitive prior of ethnic unity is seen in the stated purpose of the Laiza Conference itself. Not all EAGs in the UNFC however, were represented in the NCCT, which would later become a key point of contention in ethnic debates about all-inclusiveness. This serves as major illustrative evidence for inclusivity resonating with the ethnic representatives in the NCA process in terms of both process and content related matters.

6.4.2 The Government’s Acceptance of the Inclusivity Norm

The inclusivity norm was framed as a salient norm in the context of the Myanmar peace process despite the reticence of many MPC secretariat members. Its begrudging acceptance was accompanied by a very specific interpretation by the MPC. The government viewed an all-inclusive nationwide ceasefire agreement as possible, but only if it were to be the arbiter of which kinds of groups would be included. All-inclusiveness took on a very specific temporal aspect, pertaining only to the EAGs who were viewed as “legitimate” at the time of the Call to Peace in 2011. This position, influenced heavily by the Tatmadaw, grafted the inclusivity norm onto the existing cognitive prior of the primacy of the union, which aimed to neutralize the internal threat of insurgency by all means and at all times possible. This was further reinterpreted and reconstituted as an issue of security rather than a political, pragmatic or even normative imperative. Local agents spoke at length about “the line in the sand” that was drawn between EAGs extent for the Call to Peace and those that appeared after, which the “government cannot recognize” (Aung Naing Oo 2018, 86). Aung Naing Oo writes especially about the government’s interpretation of all-inclusiveness in his memoir in a section entitled, “Problems of all-inclusiveness with the EAOs:”

“The EAOs and the fact that the government cannot recognize the existence of some EAOs, are some of the key factors why all-inclusiveness does not work. Further, there are smaller organizations […] who are not recognized as organizations that can sign the NCA […] There are also small and big groups whose decision-making method is by consensus. Consensus decision-making makes it difficult for everyone to come to a united position because their interests and standpoints are at times different. The EAOs are also members of various alliances fighting the government, but it is a condition of the NCA that individual groups sign because alliances are not recognized as legitimate signatories, which also makes inclusiveness difficult” (Aung Naing Oo, 2018, 86).

This discourse around the “trouble with inclusiveness”⁷² connects the inclusiveness discourse to the government/Tatmadaw’s security-related fear of splinter groups and strengthening insurgencies. Some members of the government secretariat also recognized how EAGs grafted the inclusivity norm onto the notion of ethnic unity and how this also created problems among and between the armed groups. The inclusivity norm, in its cosmopolitan form as a normative imperative, is not explicitly considered in the process of ceasefire negotiations. To the government, inclusivity was reinterpreted as a security topic by local agents in the government side. These actors grafted the inclusivity norm onto to a classic security discourse among central governments who find themselves dealing with insurgencies: the discourse around spoilers. This is evidenced by a government advisor explicitly referring to the spoiler discourse in the context of the peace process under a passage entitled “understanding the problem with spoilers”⁷³ that also includes statements around the troublesome nature of all-inclusiveness as a hurdle to the peace process (Aung Naing Oo 2018, 85).

6.5 Concluding Thoughts

In sum, there is discursive evidence suggesting that some members of the government secretariat—well versed in academic and policy debates around security arrangements—acted as credible local agents to graft inclusivity onto an existing cognitive prior around neutralizing internal security threats to protect the primacy of the union, and the primacy of the Tatmadaw as the “protector” of the Union.

This chapter also analyzed the interaction between local agents and NGO mediators. It discussed how key members of the negotiating parties on both sides acted as local agents and built congruence between the inclusivity and their cognitive priors. On the EAG side, local agents grafted the cosmopolitan imperative of inclusivity onto the cognitive prior of ethnic unity between the EAGs, despite its inherent risks and history of failed and problematic alliances. They built congruence between the cosmopolitan and democratic ideals of equality and self-determination, and the cognitive prior of ethnic unity as a vehicle to fulfill the promises of Panglong. For the government negotiators, local agents with academic and technical knowledge from abroad accepted the inclusivity norm on their own terms. These local agents reinterpreted inclusivity as a security issue in the process of grafting it onto the strongly held cognitive prior of internal security and primacy of the union. They connected the inclusiveness issue to the discourse around spoilers and later would use the similar interpretations to exclude civil society groups who would seek to broaden the process away from hard security issues. In both of these interpretations, the inclusion of non-armed actors was pruned as the discourse took place in a context of ceasefire negotiations. This is where the NGO mediators started to lose their agency and the path of diffusion of the inclusivity norm—the next chapter details this process further.