Understanding Conflict Dislacements

A phenomenal number of people have been displaced as a result of conflict. It is now estimated by the UN that almost 60 million plus people have been displaced, making it the highest since 1945 (World Humanitarian Summit). On top of this, it is now estimated that it will take about 17 years on average for people to be displaced, which means that the refugee crisis becomes prolonged putting a strain on humanitarian financing. Already this is beginning to show for example out of total $19.5bn pledged by the UN in 2014, less than 70% UN funding requirement were met last year, leaving $7.5bn in unmet funding gap.

Underlying some of the causes for current conflicts are some cross-cutting characteristics including: the rise of violent non-state actors and the prevalence of civil wars; deep socio-political and ethno-religious cleavages; huge levels of mistrust and intolerance; constantly changing alliances, loyalties and relationships; changing frontlines and territorial control; destruction of social infrastructures and services; and links to natural resources. In many cases where there has been a cessation of violence and hostilities, peace agreements and the accompanying international apparatus to support their implementation have suppressed the violence but not addressed the causes of conflict. Accordingly, the risk of a re-eruption remains. One of the best indicators of where there is risk of future violent conflict is simply identifying where there was violent conflict before.

Whilst politics, faith, identity and rights are often the foreground factors for any conflict (i.e. these are the issues that people fight for and against), it is important to pay attention to the long-term systemic issues that increase conflict. In a nutshell there are possibly three strategic issues that will affect long term conflict dynamics (International Alert 2015) :

1)The world's population passed the 1 billion mark in 1810, doubled in the next hundred years, and by 2010 was about 7 billion. The projection for 2030 is 9 billion. But the issue here is not pure numbers - it is resources. When the global total reached one billion, just 3% - 30 million people - lived in cities. Today the world is 50% urbanised - that is 3.5 billion people live in cities. Projections put the percentage in 2030 at between 60 and 70% - over 5 billion. Urbanisation per se is by no means bad. Cities have many problems, but their emergence and growth is strongly and directly associated with growing literacy, a deepening culture, increased cooperation and social mobilisation for progress on political rights. However, growing urbanisation is also associated with increased output: economically, urban concentration is much more efficiently productive than rural decentralisation, which means increased consumption of natural resources. In addition, growing urbanisation provides a different set of issues with regards conflict. The Global Status Report on violence prevention 2014 shows that within low- and middle income countries, the highest estimated rates of homicide occur in the Americas , followed by Africa . The lowest estimated rate of homicide is in the low- and middle income countries of the Western Pacific .

2) Extreme poverty is conventionally defined as living on less than US$1.25 a day (in 2005 prices). According to the World Bank, 1.22 billion people were living below that line in 2010, down from 1.9 billion in 1990 - a major improvement, especially since the world's total population increased in the meantime. But 2.6 billion people live on less than US$2 a day and a total of 3.5 billion - half the world's population - on less than US$3 a day. Thus, while natural resources are consumed in abundance, half the world has very little. The problem is not just economic inequality but the unequal opportunities and access to what should be common goods, such as education, health services, clean water and safety, which flow from the economic facts. Further, the problem is not just inequality in all its dimensions, but the fact that today's information and communications technologies make relative wealth, status and prestige highly visible to those at or near the bottom of the pile. This is where the seeds of resentment lie that create fertile grounds for conflict entrepreneurs of all kinds. Countries where inequality is sharpest are often countries where inequality both fuels and is fuelled by the root and branch corruption of the governing system. Inequality is not a natural accident; it is a system of wealth and privilege that has been constructed, and is actively defended.

3) The consequent changes in our natural environment as a result of climate change has social, economic and, in many places, political effects. It thus offers new challenges to human security. Climate change is bringing more slow-onset pressures such as droughts, shifts in the timing of the monsoon in parts of south and Southeast Asia, and hotter summers and wetter winters in temperate zones. There will also likely be an increasing frequency and severity of sudden shocks - the extreme weather events such as hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones. These will put pressure on four strategic systems that are essential for the way we live:
• water supply;
• food security;
• energy supply; and
• natural resource supply chains.

These systems are also under pressure from other human-impelled changes in nature, such as the loss of biodiversity and the effects of different kinds of pollution. These changes combine to create many unknowns in the natural environment; in the long-term, economic progress is pushing up against the planetary boundaries of sustainability. It is not that life will become impossible, though some habitats will become functionally uninhabitable. Rather, these four strategic systems will become more vulnerable, more costly and more complex with conflict as one of the consequences.

Thus addressing the long term displacement means we need serious movement to tackle these three phenomenon.

This originally appeared in Huffington Post

Myanmar's Transition

With claims of genocide in Myanmar, the international community has failed to usher the country through its democratic transition.

Al Jazeera English recently broadcast a documentary, which was supported by a Yale Law School report, that accused the Myanmar government of an orchestrated campaign to trigger communal violence, and it claimed there was “strong evidence” of genocide against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority situated in the country’s Rakhine State.

Much of what the report discusses is nothing new to those who have been following the issue over the last few decades. To some extent, the findings justify the fears of many who had warned that Myanmar’s journey of “transitional democracy” was at best weak or at worst a superficial attempt at misleading the international community.

What the report and documentary do highlight is the embarrassing situation world powers find themselves in having not heeded these warnings.

Led primarily by British Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama, the international community has fallen over itself to “reengage” with Myanmar and to normalize relationships, while fulfilling childhood fantasies of meeting Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. In this haste, countries such as Britain and the United States have turned a blind eye to the violence meted out to the Rohingya and have had muted responses to the Andaman sea refugee crisis earlier this year.

Much has been made about the transition to a democratic process after the first set of elections in 2010, which brought to power the military’s civilian proxy, and the first free and fair elections for 25 years taking place on November 8, 2015. It was assumed that that this would be the watershed moment for democracy in Myanmar. Yet the ban on voting for minority groups like the Rohingya casts a shadow on what is already a deeply contested and controversial process.

In its quest to encourage Myanmar to come in from the cold, the international community somehow failed to remember simple things. The country needed to conquer the longstanding fear of outsiders—an effect of decades of isolation, with an internalization of the regime’s propaganda. The fact that the population, which has so far been insulated, would have to learn to interact with far more non-Burmese, non-Buddhist and indeed Muslim communities should have been handled during this transition, offsetting the rhetoric coming out of the Buddhist clergy.

The report also exposes a weakness in the process the international community proposes as a country transitions into becoming more open. As with what happened in the Central African Republic, the emphasis is usually on holding elections as this seems to be the litmus test of democracy and a return to some normality.

However, as with many other countries in the region, democracy is not just about holding elections. It is about understanding the concepts of shared societies, which means developing socially cohesive societies that respect diversity. This process about understanding universal democratic principles and human rights should have been the focus, as opposed to allowing the consolidation of power based on religious-ethno-nationalist markings.

IN FROM THE COLD

The international community has also been woefully let down by its over-romanticized perceptions of Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). Incidents over the past few years clearly show an apparent breakdown in the moral logic of Myanmar’s internationally vaunted opposition. This is equally a problem of the international community as it is with Suu Kyi and the NLD.

There are some serious questions we must ask ourselves: Have our own perceptions of the pro-democracy movement been colored—in terms of representing their battles against the junta as some sort of pure quest of good vs evil—when all they represented was just an opposition to the regime but not necessarily anything better? Did we mistake their opposition to the junta to be an acceptance of universal human rights and a commitment to tolerance?

These questions point to a deeper malaise within Burmese society that needs to be tackled, perhaps even from a deep theological basis.

This offers little respite to the people on the ground at the receiving end of violence. The fear is that the crisis will continue, thereby leading to another wave of refugees—or worse to support radicalization and militancy in the region.

The international community faces an interesting paradox: How do world powers deal with a new government in Myanmar knowing fully well that a portion of the voters were excluded? Should the ruling party return to power, how could they be dealt with knowing that they orchestrated a genocide campaign? Should Suu Kyi’s party come to power, how does she morally and ethically stand up to the scrutiny that she will be under to act on the report’s findings?

Either way, these are all unanswered questions that point to an uncertain future for Myanmar, its democratic journey and its treatment of minorities, especially the Rohingya.

Much of it lies in economic and security interests that Myanmar offers, particularly for world powers. Countries like Britain—as has been recently illustrated with the visit of the Egyptian president—are much more immune to these concerns, especially if there is an economic interest involved.

Whichever government comes to power following the November 8 elections in Myanmar, it will be one that is diluted by the fact that a portion of the voters were disenfranchised and that the lead-up to the vote was marred by an orchestrated campaign of genocide. The international community should do well to remember this when it engages and further encourages Myanmar to come in from the cold.

This originally appeared on Fair Observer