1 WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY TRAINING IN MYANMAR AN ASSESSMENT ON BEHALF OF THE ALLIANCE FOR GENDER INCLUSION IN THE PEACE PROCESS Summary version, October 2016
INTRODUCTION
This assessment was commissioned by Alliance for Gender Inclusion in the Peace Process (AGIPP), an alliance formed in 2014 of eight national organisations and networks dedicated to advancing peace and women’s empowerment. To advance women’s participation in Myanmar’s peace processes, AGIPP sought, via this assessment, to better understand current training approaches to capacity building for women’s participation and for the inclusion of gender equality concerns.
AGIPP also intends this assessment to inform decisions within the Alliance regarding training and capacity- building initiatives it will undertake for its members, and to ensure that such efforts produce the most strategic impact possible. This requires assessment not only of the quality of existing training initiatives, but also of the adequacy of current coordination efforts, the return on investments (in terms of the political or social impact of training initiatives), the extent to which gaps are identifed and flled in terms of skills or categories of people who need this training, and the degree to which training is integrated with other efforts to support women’s participation in public decision-making and to ensure that gender equality issues are addressed.
The assessment was informed by desk research and interviews conducted over March to June 2016. Annex 1 provides an account of methods. Acronyms/Abbreviations AGIPP : Alliance for Gender Inclusion in the Peace Process BWU : Burmese Women’s Union BPfA : Beijing Platform for Action CEDAW : Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women EAO : Ethnic Armed Organisation FPD : Framework of Political Dialogue GDI : Gender and Development Institute GEN : Gender Equality Network GoM : Government of Myanmar KWPN : Kachin Women’s Peace Network KSWN : Kachin State’s Women Network KWO : Karen Women’s Organisation MWN : Mon Women’s Network NSPAW : National Strategic Plan for the Advancement of Women UPC : Union Peace Conference WLB : Women’s League of Burma WON : Women’s Organisations Network WPS : Women Peace and Security
1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A signifcant political transition in Myanmar has created unprecedented political openings for women at all levels of decision-making on confict resolution and democratisation. These opportunities have created high demand for knowledge and skills related to Women, Peace and Security (WPS) frameworks and analytical methods. This demand is being met with an array of training programmes offered by international NGOs (INGOs), the United Nations (UN), donors and local providers. There is evidence that coordination is inadequate between training funders and providers, resulting in duplication of effort, quite a lot of training concentrated on a relatively small group of activists, and an unmet need for advanced training and coaching to enhance the impact of women leaders. A wider distribution of basic WPS training for a broader group of policy makers and shapers (next generation leaders), as well as community leaders, would be valuable. Finally, connections between technical skills-building and advocacy efforts to exploit and widen political openings for women could be improved with stronger coordination and strategic leadership.
The assessment identifed a range of WPS training initiatives from low-cost community-based initiatives to address Gender-based Violence (GBV) or to build women’s leadership to relatively high-level training and overseas study tours, mainly to women peace activists, but also to government offcials, journalists and other professionals. For many years there has also been long-standing training of grassroots women leaders offered by organisations working with women on the borders or in exile.
There are three broad types:
1. Community-based wide-focus gender awareness and women’s leadership training (these are sometimes long-duration, usually involve large numbers, often part of organisation-building of women’s ethnic/regional networks); 2. Narrow-focus specifc peacebuilding skills training for deployment in specifc confict-resolution roles (for instance ceasefre monitoring). This category also includes skills-building in community and women’s protection (E.g. efforts to prevent GBV); 3. Advocacy training for activists and policymakers to build capacities to infuence state and national-level confict resolution processes, and to network and strategise for impact.
Key observations from the assessment include:
Preparation: Needs assessments are conducted in advance of training offered by some community training providers and some international donors. However, pre-surveys to identify the knowledge level of participants are typically not conducted, therefore the degree of learning is not assessed. Participants with advanced knowledge are sometimes grouped with newcomers to WPS, which slows down the learning rate. A tense and counter- productive environment sometimes emerges when activists are clustered with government offcials in trainings.
Content: There is a content ‘rut’ in which many training initiatives re-use the same basic material with insuffcient investment in either updating content, tailoring to the context, offering advanced skills, or assisting participants to conduct analysis and draft agreement language relevant to current processes. Many training recipients raised concerns about diffculties in applying their learning about WPS frameworks to the Myanmar context and a majority articulated a need for training in gender analysis of negotiation texts, constitutions, power- sharing proposals, and planning documents such as the National Strategic Plan for the Advancement of Women (NSPAW).
2 Delivery (teaching methods, translation, logistics): Training participants prefer experiential teaching methods (simulation games, site visits, painstaking gender analysis of agreements) over classroom lectures. However, experiential methods are less common than methods offering critiques of the current situation. These critiques are not considered by participants to be helpful in identifying constructive solutions. Poor translation and confused or sub-standard interpretation are serious obstacles to learning. Women with childcare and other caring responsibilities need support if travel is involved.
Impact: None of the training programmes assessed had yet produced an evaluation of impact. Community- based programmes do have some consistent indicators of impact (evidence of women taking leadership roles in communities, evidence of attitudinal change, emergence of new women’s’ groups). Advocacy-oriented trainings however often lack indicators of impact.
Application/follow-up: Follow-up activities for advocacy-related training include network formation, implementation of local peacebuilding activities, and strategic planning within women’s groups. Follow-up is not systematic and is often missing or else is managed ‘remotely’ i.e. via externally-located INGO staff to individual women through email.
Costs: Community-based training is considerably cheaper than higher-level advocacy-related training. In-country costs per person for community-based training are as low as approximately USD650 per person (for extended training that can last a year) versus almost USD2000 per person for week-long training in Yangon. At the upper end of costs, a prominent 42-day training programme that involves overseas travel costs over USD20,000 per person. The fees for trainers/expertise take up around 50% of most training budgets. Training budgets often either do not include the cost of follow-up or monitoring and evaluation, or fold these costs into the cost of external staff. This indicates the relatively low priority given to follow-up or application of training. Donor coordination is also needed to avoid double-investment in similar trainings (with similar participants) and to harmonise messaging with the Government on WPS priorities.
Coordination: There is insuffcient coordination and strategic planning to distribute training resources to underserved populations, or to participants who are not ‘the usual suspects’. Connections between training initiatives and either the exploitation or creation of political opportunities are highly uneven if not generally absent. AGIPP can support more effective coordination of training opportunities, to encourage development of more tailored content for particular recipients, and to expand and build communication in the network of trainees. It hosts quarterly coordination meetings with INGOs and UN agencies in part to secure coordination on training activities.
Broader capacity-building: Training is only one feature of capacity-building. Opportunities to develop capacity (including by applying training) must be created via establishing more opportunities for women’s participation – by broadening Track II initiatives, building gender sub-committees attached to upcoming negotiations, and expanding opportunities for civil society to consult with negotiators, and national and regional decision-makers. This should also include supporting women to apply learning in their organisations through coaching to develop strategic plans and refne activities and projects.
3 BEYOND TRAINING
The ability of women, individually and collectively, to infuence peace and political processes, comes in part from training but also from individual connections to policy-makers and power-holders, size and strength of the organised groups supporting gender equality, communication skills in writing and speaking, conviction and determination. Training alone cannot deliver the opportunities, constituency strength, and connections that may be needed to make an impact. Other interventions that can help increase the visibility of women’s policy infuence efforts (ideally in tandem with training) include:
• Increase the number of Track II initiatives and engage women’s groups in these. Peace dialogues between civil society groups and different communities in Myanmar can contribute to the broader peace and trust-building process. • Gender sub-committees: Whether or not a gender quota is met for the next phase of the peace dialogues, a specifc gender sub-committee could be formed at the peace talks to ensure that gender issues are addressed in relation to every subject under discussion. Experts on specifc elements of the discussion could inform negotiators, male and female. • Women’s Caucus in Parliament and in forums for political dialogue: A caucus offce for women in parliament to confer on shared interests, regardless of party standing, could help generate stronger capacity to implement existing commitments (for instance to the gender quota, or the NSPAW) as well as to advancing gender equality concerns in the peace process. • Parliamentary sub-committee on gender issues: This is a formal means of bringing a gender perspective on the parliament’s day to day business through gender analysis of upcoming legislation. It can also provide a venue for interactions between MPs and women’s civil society groups. The newly created Parliamentary Committee on Women and Children is likely an excellent location from which to begin this work. • Information-deepening: Documentation and on-going mapping of women’s engagement in the peace process (in terms of numbers as well as infuence over content) as well as documentation of the impact of confict on women (including features of confict economies such as non-transparent management of extractive industries, unregulated environmental impact of extractives, sex and drug traffcking, and trauma, alcoholism, and drug abuse) can help to build the case for attention to gender issues. • Internal exchange visits: Different parts of Myanmar have developed at different rates or been affected by confict differently. Inter-communal understanding and solidarity can be built via exposure trips for women across states.
As one women’s rights and peace activist said: ‘Women have to proactively create a strategy to get involved in the peace process without waiting for the government or EAOs to invite us. We should simultaneously build the women’s peace movement and draw in the general public, to pressure the women who are in the formal track. Women’s’ groups have to come together to change the political dialogue framework, for instance women could be an 8th sector in the next Union Peace Conference while maintaining the 30% quota in the other sectors.’
4 RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendations cover three broad areas:
1. Improvements to the design, content, delivery methods, follow up and assessment of WPS training; 2. Diversifcation of providers and recipients; 3. Maximising strategic impact through coordination and identifcation of opportunities for women’s engagement in public decision-making.
1. Improvements to the design, content, delivery methods, follow up and assessment of WPS training
Key action: Establish pre-and post-surveys to adapt training to participants’ needs • Pre-surveys should be an automatic part of planning training. They should survey not only general training needs but levels of knowledge so as to ensure tailored content and appropriate delivery methods. See Annex 2 for a generic template that could be adapted. • Pre-surveys should establish knowledge baselines against which learning achievements can be assessed not only immediately after training, but learning retention after some time (for instance after one year).
Key action: More basic training at the local level; more specialised content for policy advocates • Community-level WPS training need not focus on formal and diffcult to operationalise normative frameworks, but ought to enable women to see the importance of on-going peace processes and to identify means of engaging with it. • Specialised training is needed in technical aspects of the on-going processes e.g.; designing electoral reforms, federal arrangements, local government systems, public expenditure management. While short-duration training will not create professional expertise in these areas, it will enable gender equality advocates to ensure that decisions on power-sharing, devolution, national revenue-raising and expenditure do not undermine women’s rights.
Key action: Minimum standards/common core content for WPS training • The following ought to be regarded as minimum necessary components for basic WPS training: • Gendered identity and self-refection; • Exploring feminist approaches and impacts; • Gendered power analysis; • Norms: understanding how Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), General Recommendation 30 (GR 30) and the WPS agenda are relevant to Myanmar; • National legal / policy frameworks that can aid or obstruct implementation of the WPS agenda: NSPAW, Penal Code, 2008 Constitution, the four laws on the Protection of ‘Race and Religion’ (2015), national CEDAW implementation (2016 reporting), draft Preventing of Violence Against Women (PoVAW) law; • Refection on the personal transformation of trainees – including stimulating participants to explore their gendered identity and what that means to them as political actors; • Analysis skills: how to develop a gender-specifc critique of a policy proposal, how is policy making evolving in Myanmar – where is each trainee in the policy cycle – are they advancing policy positions? • Focused exercises on the text of settlements currently under negotiation to add gender-sensitive language.
5 • The following could be the minimum necessary components for extended or advanced WPS training: • What is the typical/traditional policy cycle? Where is the WPS issue in Myanmar in this cycle? Which parts do you currently work on or want to work on? • Thematic knowledge: specifc training on areas such as SSR, community security, DDR. Governance systems (including proposals on federalism), Transitional Justice, extractive industries and confict, and regional economic, political, social issues, and more: sWhat are the gender perspectives on those topics, good practice from elsewhere, indicators of gender-sensitive progress in these areas, how would a trainee negotiate them, what would they advise their male colleagues on how to negotiate in this area? • Well-designed simulation exercises for learning on negotiation skills, responding to resistance and obstruction, developing compromise positions, etc.; • Confdence-building including the concept of freedom from fear to support confdence in public speaking and negotiations; • Logical analysis and critical thinking; • Effective oral and written communication skills and advocacy; • Practical exercises to capture opportunities for advocacy and infuence, practice in drafting gender- sensitive text, practice in public speaking each trainee’s organisation gets involved in the peace process; • Differences between inclusion, participation and representation and how to be an effective ‘women’s representative’.
Key action: Use active practice or experiential learning methods and deliver training in Myanmar languages • Hands-on learning methods are more effective than classroom lectures therefore more training content should be delivered via exercises in identifying gender biases in legal/constitutional documents, drafting component of peace accords, drafting a media strategy, drafting advocacy messages, drafting speeches for leaders, etc. • Experiential methods help to build confdence and practice speaking and negotiating skills. Effective approaches include simulation trainings, press conferences, meetings with EAO and government leaders, briefngs for donors to the Myanmar peace/democratisation process, meetings overseas with foreign policy and other offcials. • Training in Burmese and other local languages is needed to overcome comprehension challenges especially when training groups other than urban-based gender equality advocates. Investment is needed in high-quality translation of training materials and where training is offered in English, investment is needed in excellent simultaneous translation.
Key action: Gender-sensitive logistics: childcare costs, length of overseas visits • Training lasting longer than one week should include stipends or other provisions to cover the costs of replacing women’s childcare and other domestic care responsibilities. Training budgets must include this component, training participants must be informed of what is available to them with adequate advance notice to make appropriate arrangements.
Key action: Strategic follow up: Coaching, mentoring, proposal drafting, connections to opportunities for voicing opinions and policy suggestions • The practical application of training by individuals could be supported through a small grants programme. Coaching and mentoring should be expanded. Refresher courses are needed – the peer-to-peer method used by Nyein/Swisspeace/UN Women is valuable and cost-effective as well as contributing to network renewal. • Follow-up and impact can be intensifed through the creation of a community of practice of trainees through developing a roster of trained gender and WPS experts that can be called upon to support specifc tasks in upcoming negotiations. 6 • Strategic follow-up of training requires close coordination of training initiatives to ensure that trainees go on to engage in and infuence on-going negotiations.
Key action: Consistent independent evaluation • All WPS and related training programmes that have taken place two years ago or longer should set in motion independent external evaluations to determine learning retention and impact.
Key action: Establish and share Myanmar-specifc indicators of impact • Training for activists or offcials often lack indicators of impact. A valuable initial activity for improved coordination would be collaboration between funders, providers, women’s organisations/networks, and training recipients, to identify and share indicators of strategic impact. Shared indicators would enable comparison of training effectiveness across different training programmes. The following could be tracked as a measure of impact:
• Advocacy campaigns (for instance, advocating for an electoral gender quota or for attention to GBV or female combatants in ceasefre negotiations); • Communications initiatives such as increased media coverage of women’s human rights issues; • Analytical or drafting work to create gender-responsive provisions in settlements under negotiation; • Strategic planning in women’s networks; • Levels and diversity of funding for women’s peacebuilding initiatives; • Parliamentary or regional government hearings or debates on gender issues in peace and democracy initiatives; • Creation of new opportunities/spaces for women to provide input to negotiations – for instance gender subcommittees to create briefngs for delegates.
2. Diversifcation of providers and recipients • Engaging Government offcials is crucial. WPS training should be offered to government offcials, particularly those engaged in supporting the next round of talks, as well as those implementing national frameworks such as NSPAW or engaged in governance reforms. EAO leaders and senior delegates should be trained. So too should regional administrators and politicians, those likely to be delegates in the next peace conference, journalists, as well as individuals who will be facilitators, translators and rapporteurs, and representatives from the media. Training can help build bridges between civil society and government actors. • Training the next generation of women peace activists is vital. The cultivation of a new generation of democracy and peace leaders in the country is a priority and young people such as university students should be targeted for training. • Engaging men is the next step: ‘If you want to promote women in peace process -- you really need to focus on men.’ (staff member of UN agency). Resistance from men seriously undermines individual women’s capacities to engage in peace processes let alone the collective impact of women in policy change efforts. Any effort to engage men must include them in understanding the social and cultural construction of dominant and violent masculinities. The destructive consequences of men’s perceived entitlement to monopolise power and resources must also be addressed. This is important in order to avoid a common pattern in which men’s engagement becomes a protective and patronising or controlling project. • There are specialised high level training programmes on gender and mediation. Myanmar negotiators and facilitators involved in the ceasefre and political discussions could beneft from this training.
7 Key action: Indigenise WPS training expertise: expand training of trainers and local knowledge providers • University departments could be supported to bring WPS issues into classes and also to support domestication of WPS training through skills development of academics. Training initiatives could be paralleled with research programmes as a means of supporting domestic research into women’s engagement with the peace effort. Gender and development think-tanks could be supported to expand training capability. • Training of Trainers Programmes should be conducted in Burmese and expanded and monitored.
3. Strategic exploitation of opportunities to infuence decision-making Training alone will not bring women to the peace table. Nor is it the sole form of capacity-building. Other forms of capacity-building should be explored not only through techniques such as mentoring and shadowing decision- makers, but through advocacy for changes to the peacebuilding architecture to accelerate and intensify women’s participation. For instance, new forums, formal or informal, could be built to enable women to learn about and input to peace discussions – such as a gender sub-committee in ceasefre and peace talks, a women’s caucus in Parliament and/or a parliamentary subcommittee on gender, a series of human security seminars to build priorities for the next peace conference. Community-level peace forums could be established to mediate and prevent local conficts. Exchange visits between participants of WPS training in different states and regions could support efforts to build a broader constituency supporting gender equality in the peace and democracy processes.
• A coordination secretariat (like AGIPP) or a network of donors and civil society could ensure improved coordination of training resources and initiatives. Coordination must be supported through transparent information-sharing, as well as through inputs from government and donors in order to identify existing and emerging opportunities for trainees to apply their knowledge. • Exchange and exposure visits to distant foreign capitals should include a coordinated advocacy project for active lobbying of foreign affairs offcials. This should also aim to generate fnancial or political support for the in-country work of activists. • Domestic training programmes should include cross-learning between states/regions of Myanmar through study visits or locating training off the beaten track of the capital or Yangon.
Key action: Donor leverage - Coordination diplomatic support and resources for WPS in Myanmar • Coordination efforts must link capacity-building to political opportunities. This requires communication with government and EAOs as well as donors to ensure that women’s peace organisations are informed about and engaged in peace and governance discussions. • In addition, the fullest range of mechanisms to support women’s inclusion should be explored. The UN envoy to Myanmar for instance has not yet invited the UN Department of Political Affairs to send its gender and mediation expert to support his work. This is standard practice now in mediation efforts and should be done soon.
Acknowledgements: This report was produced by Anne Marie Goetz, Professor, Centre for Global Affairs, New York University, and Kay Soe, independent consultant. We acknowledge with thanks the guidance of the staff of the AGIPP secretariat, and of AGIPP’s members. We thank the many people who kindly spared time to participate in interviews.
Suggestion citation: Anne Marie Goetz and Kay Soe (2016), Women, Peace and Security Training in Myanmar. An Assessment on behalf of the Alliance for Gender Inclusion in the Peace Process, Summary Report, October, Yangon: AGIPP.
8 ANNEXES
Annex 1: Methodology Annex 2: Generic pre-event Women, Peace and Security Questionnaire
Annex 1: Methodology
This process included an assessment of the range, quality, perceptions of impact, and degree of coordination of WPS training in Myanmar. While it adhered to standards set out by international authorities on gender- responsive evaluation as well as for responsible evaluation of peacebuilding efforts1, it is not an evaluation with strict measurements of the impact of specifc training initiatives.
The main source of evidence was semi-structured interviews with training recipients, providers and donors, mostly conducted in Myanmar.
A total of 66 people were interviewed using questionnaires that differed for recipients, providers and funders (see below). The distribution of respondents is as follows: • Training Recipients: 21 (of whom 11 had gone on to become training providers in Myanmar) • Trainers and/or Providers (i.e.: representatives of organisations that design and deliver training): 19 • Training Funders: 14 • Training Funders who were also Providers/Trainers: 7 • Others: (analysts, government, activists who had not received training): 6
Interviewees were identifed by the AGIPP Secretariat in Yangon and by the two consultants. This was a purposive sample, selected with a view to include a range of training providers, funders and recipients. Training providers and recipients in rural areas were under-represented. Interviews were conducted in English and Myanmar. All respondents were promised that their remarks would be used but not directly attributed.
Issues addressed in interviews differed by the training role of the respondent. This in the case of training funders, the focus was on their objectives in supporting training, issues of training design and planning (including preparatory work, selection of participants, matching content to purpose), considerations of value for money, methods for assessing relevance and application of training, and perceived impact. For training providers, the focus was on the content of training programmes and delivery methods, as well as follow-up and perceptions of effectiveness of the training. For training recipients, the focus was on the training experience such as engagement and networking with other participants, perceptions of relevance of content to the Myanmar situation, assessment of skills acquired and retention of core components of the training, and usefulness of what had been learned.
Limitations The heavy reliance on interviews means this study is grounded in subjective assessments. This can undermine accuracy in reporting on numbers of participants trained, exact dates of training programmes, exact purposes of training etc. AGIPP’s mapping of training offered by its members was useful in clarifying specifcs on dates and numbers - however, the mapping questionnaire was not flled in by all organisations at the time of the study. In addition, the mapping lacked detail on training content, frequency, number of participants, and budgets.
1. UN Women (2015), How to manage gender-responsive evaluation; UN Women (2014), Guide for the Evaluation of Programmes and Projects with a Gender, Human Rights and Interculturality Perspective; OECD/DAC (2010), Quality Standards for Development Evaluation; OECD/ DAC (2012), Evaluating Peacebuilding Activities in Settings of Confict and Fragility. 9 The location of the study in Yangon meant it refects primarily the perceptions of a specifc set of actors, many of them well-informed on WPS issues and on the current Myanmar peace efforts. Perspectives from states and regions were sought through phone interviews with state-based activists. However, perspectives about the impact of community-level training on peace issues are lacking.
Use of English language for many of the interviews also narrowed the range of respondents, though a number of interviews were conducted in Myanmar to address this limitation.
Documentary support for the analysis was uneven as few training providers maintain (or are willing to share) consistent and detailed records of curricula, budgets, or assessments of impact. Requests for curricula, agendas, list of participants were only partly effective in generating documentation. Very few organisations agreed to share detailed training budgets. Reasons for this include the fact that training documents (including budgetary details) are regarded as proprietary; they are income-generating forms of intellectual capital that owners are reluctant to share.
10 Interviewee Name Organisation
Phyu Phyu Sann Global Justice Centre (NYC)
Nang Phyu Phyu Lin Independent consultant, formerly of GEN
Silja Rajander Liaison Offce of Finland
May Oo Mutraw Joint Peace Fund
Thandar Oo Women and Peace Action Network (Shan State)
Khin Soe Win Women and Peace Action Network (Shan State)
Aye Thandar AGIPP
Kerstin Lundgren Embassy of Sweden
Nang Ohnmar Than Embassy of Norway
Nang Shan Lahpai Nyein (Shalom) Foundation
Ban Seng Bu Nyein (Shalom) Foundation
Elizabeth Armstrong Peace Support Fund
Alex Robinson UNFPA
Mi Mi Thin Aung UNFPA
Sanda Thant UNDP
Peter Barwick UNDP/Department of Political Affairs
Jean D’Cunha UN Women
Melanie Hilton Action Aid
Lwin Lwin Hlaing Action Aid
Annami Lofving AGIPP
Daw Myint Swe Myanmar Women’s Affairs Federation
Steve Ainsworth Department for International Development, UK
Theo Hollander Department for International Development, UK
Ben Powis Department for International Development, UK
11 Interviewee Name Organisation
Jessica Davey USAID, Offce of transitional Initiatives
Hla Hla Yee Rakhine Tahaya Association
Issac Khen Gender and Development Institute
Ja Nan Lathaw Nyein (Shalom) Foundation
Cherry Soe Mon Women’s Network (MWN)
Thuzar Tin Women’s Organisation Network (WON)
Nang Pu Kachin State Women’s Network (KSWN)
Khin Ma Ma Myo Myanmar Institute of Peace and Security Studies
Kyaw Lin Oo Myanmar People’s Forum
Cate Buchanan Nyein Foundation
Leslie Macracken US Embassy
Nang Khin Lay Nge US Embassy
Lindsay Kennedy US Embassy
Mi Sue Pwint All Burma Student Democratic Front (ABSDF) Burmese Women Union (BWU)
Nay Yi Ba Swe National League for Democracy
Naw Pa Leh Wah Karen Women Empowerment Group
Birke Herzbruch Trocaire
Pyae Phyo Swe Trocaire
Nyo Nyo Thin Independent
Thin Thin Aung Women’s League of Burma / AGIPP SC member
Su Su Swe Women’s League of Burma / AGIPP SC member
Maran Ja Seng Hkawn Kachin Women Union MP
Nilar Tun CARE International
Laro Gonzalez International Rescue Committee
12 Interviewee Name Organisation
Annabelle Khin Sett Lin Christian Aid
Nick Cumpston Australia Embassy
May Sabe Phyu Gender Equality Network (GEN)/AGIPP SC
Vijaya Nidadavolu Gender Equality Network
Wai Wai Nu Women Peace Network- Arakan
Rebecca Spence Peaceworks
Elisabeth Maber Research Consortium on Education and Peacebuilding (Brigh- ton, UK)
Courtenae Dunn Center for Peace and Confict Studies (Cambodia)
Cheery Zahau Chin Progressive Party
Rachel Gasser Swisspeace
Carrie O’Neill Inclusive Security
Allison Muehlenbeck Inclusive Security
Shuchu Tripathi CREA (Women’s Leadership Institute)
Sunita Kujur CREA
Claudine Haenni Embassy of Switzerland, Yangon
Asa Johansson InDevelop
Jen Clark International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA)
Poe Ei Phyu Oxfam
Su Sandar Koe Oxfam
13 Annex 3: Generic pre-event Women, Peace and Security Questionnaire This is provided as ‘food for thought’ and can be adapted to specifc trainings, levels of participants, and topics.
Q1: How many trainings have you been to on Women, Peace and Security? (Please list year/month, location and who it was organised by?)
Q2: What are the three most important things you have learned:
Q3: What skills and knowledge you would like to learn at this event and future training?
Q4: In Myanmar who are the most important target for WPS policy and analysis? Choose the four most important actors: Media and journalists EAOs Donors Union Govt offcials Peace organisations CSFoP State government/administration offcial Other civil society INGOs NRPC
(Aims to understand who participants see as key targets)
Q5. Myanmar has ratifed which norms and when: UNSCR 1325 NSPAW Beijing Platform CEDAW
(Aims to highlight the different status of norms, ‘soft’ and ‘hard’)
Q6. NSPAW aligns with: UNSCR 1325 Beijing Platform Myanmar Constitution The Paris Principles CEDAW Sustainable Development Goals
(Aims to understand the level of awareness of NSPAW. It closely aligns with the Beijing Platform.)
Q 7 The terms ‘protection agenda’ and ‘participation agenda’ refer to what?
(Aims to understand the level of clarity about the protection and participation agendas.)
Q 8 Describe in 2-3 sentences how policy is made
(Aims to understand the level of understanding about policy making – an evolving concept in Myanmar.)
Q 9. Policymaking involves…Choose the top 5 elements numbered 1-5
Writing media stories Holding conferences Doing research Having debates Politicians making decisions Advocacy Evidence Facebook posts Long reports Awareness raising Going to conferences Other things such as…
(Aims to understand the level of understanding about policy making – an evolving concept in Myanmar.)
14 Q10. Who are the most important targets for information and ideas on WPS in Myanmar?
Choose the 5 top targets - numbered 1-5 Religious leaders Community members Government offcials Myanmar Peace Centre UN personnel Young people Media Border organisations NLD parliamentarians Aid workers International donors Armed groups Others (name them)
(Aims to re-test, through rephrasing, Q4.)
Q 11. What is the most effective way of transmitting policy messages in Myanmar? Facebook Interviews with media Meetings Outreach to stakeholders Briefngs with policymakers Television Newspaper Radio Other ways such as…
15