Concerns and Recommendations Regarding Peace Funds

By Burma's ethnic community and civil society organizations • October 8, 2012

While the Burma government has announced a few steps to pursue a peace process, they are fragile and are at best just a beginning. A comprehensive peace process requires good-faith political dialogue and multi-sectoral efforts. Burma is not there yet.

However, official aid agencies of Norway, the European Union, United Kingdom, Australia and the United Nations, as well as the World Bank, have recently formed the Peace Donor Support Group (PDSG) with the purpose of incentivizing peace-building and development via peace funds. Norway leads the Myanmar Peace Support Initiative (MPSI) while the World Bank has formally announced the provision of Community Driven Development (CDD) Program using the State and Peace-Building Fund (SPF).

While peace funds are well intentioned, the governance of them has some shortcomings. We are concerned that they have the potential to undermine the agenda for a comprehensive peace process and engender more harm than the projected benefits.

This position paper outlines our collective message to PDSG, especially to Norway and the World Bank given that they are moving ahead with their peace fund initiatives, as well as other proponents including the Burma government and its concerned agencies, the implementing NGOs, private firms and consultants.

Download the position paper or the summary here.