A Brief NCA History, the NCA’s Flaws and Failings

The efforts of the Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) to negotiate a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with the Burmese/Myanmar government began in November 2013 at the Ethic Armed Organizations Conference in Laiza, Kachin State, where the 16 Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) established their Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT) […]

Outcome Statement of senior officials Workshop on UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and Related Resolutions

The Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC) and UN Women, Myanmar organized a Workshop on UN Security Council Resolution, 1325 ( UNSCR 1325) on Women, Peace and Security, and related Resolutions in Nay Pyi Taw on 27-28 April 2015. The meeting brought together 41 participants – parliamentarians, senior government officials from ministries addressing women, peace and security issues, commissioners and staff of MNHRC and academics […]

Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement Unlikely in April

On 31 March, the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT) and the Union Peacemaking Work Committee (UPWC) finalized the draft of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), which comprises seven chapters and thirty-three sections. China, the UN, and other armed resistance organizations such as the Restoration Council of Shan State, All Burma Students Democratic Front, and Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang observed the latest round of the talks in Rangoon.

Time for Honesty Around Peace and Conflict

Peace talks resumed after a six month hiatus between the Burma Governments’ Union Peace-making Work Committee (UPWC) and the alliance of ethnic armed groups, the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT). Yet in an extraordinary display of hypocrisy, the Burma Army began airstrikes again against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), just as the talks paused for a week-long break. This is to complement the airstrikes currently targeting the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in northern Shan State.

The Burma Government, through its proxies the UPWC and the Myanmar Peace Center, consistently attempts to dominate the discourse surrounding the peace talks, eschewing positive conclusions whenever talks happen. Time and time again the media is told that the signing of a nationwide ceasefire accord (NCA) is ‘just round the corner,’ or in this case, ‘within days.’ How can the signing of the NCA be within days if the Burma Army has opened two fronts on its war against ethnic armed groups? Furthermore, although the MNDAA is part of the NCCT, they have been excluded from the most recent peace talks, with the Government and the Burma Army steadfastly refusing to consider any method of engagement with them apart from through military means. There needs to be honesty from the government on the realities of the prospects for peace so that parties concerned, including the donors and civil society, are able to contribute and help steer the process instead of losing trust in it […]

UNFC Statement on Current Talks and Raging of Ferocious Battles on the Ground

We all know that members of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), together with fraternal ethnic armed resistance organizations, have been endeavoring by various means, with the specific intent of ending over 60-year-long civil war in Burma/Myanmar and resolving the political problems, through round-table talks and consultations with successive governments, and now the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordinating Team (NCCT) and the Union Peace-making Work Committee (UPWC) are holding talks for realizing the signing of Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement […]

Statement on Consultation Organized by Border-based Civil Society Organisations with the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT)

On November 22-23, 2014, 42 representatives of 25 border-based civil society organisations (CSOs), working on education, health, media, migrant workers’ rights, refugees, the environment, women’s issues and human rights, held a consultation meeting with the NCCT. This was the first such meeting with the NCCT held formally by a broad grouping of border-based CSOs. […]

KNU Position Statement on Tatmadaw’s Bombardment with Heavy Weapons on KIO Military Officer Academy

1. We were much saddened on receiving the news that 23 young cadet officers were killed and 20 others wounded, who were attending the KIO Military Academy, due to Myanmar Tatmadaw’s bombardment with heavy weapons on November 19, 2014 […]

KIA ဗိုလ္ေလာင္း သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းသို႔ ပစ္ခတ္တိုက္ခိုက္မႈအေပၚ ခ်င္းအမ်ဳိးသားတပ္ဦး၏ သေဘာထား ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

KIA ဗိုလ္သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းသို႔ ျမန္မာအစိုးရစစ္တပ္မွ လက္နက္ႀကီးျဖင့္ ပစ္ခတ္တိုက္ခိုက္မႈအေပၚ KIA ၏ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

Key Messages to World Leaders, International Governments and the UN Concerns and Requests Related to Humanitarian Situation in Kachin and Northern Shan States, Myanmar

The 25th ASEAN Summit is commencing from 11 to 13 November 2014, hosted by Myanmar in its capital, NaypyiTaw. Most prominent world leaders are gathering and discussing important matters affecting the ASEAN countries and, inevitably, the interconnected global arena. On this occasion, Joint Strategy Team for Kachin Humanitarian Response would like to urge the world leaders, international governments and the UN to pay attention to the following concerns and take immediate actions to fulfill the requests. We firmly believe that the world leaders, international governments and the UN will strongly support the protection of dignity and rights of the internally displaced persons. […]