The concept of people governing themselves is beginning to take root in an exciting way in Myanmar, as documented recently in Noema magazine by Charles Petrie, a former UN assistant secretary general and representative in the country.
In Myanmar, as Petrie writes, the national government and its Tatmandaw (its armed forces) are no longer able to control the people. And in the vacuum, Petrie found that various elements in the communities are organizing to govern themselves.
“The struggle against the Tatmadaw has morphed from a fight by ethnic groups to control territory into the emergence of a new form of participatory governance,” writes Petrie.
Led by young activists in their 20s and early 30s, are earning broad acceptance by respecting local traditions, remaining polite and, over time, providing services that had not previously existed in their communities.
For example, these volunteers set up a significant number of hospitals and clinics, and rebuilt them every time they were bombed. “I met one group of activists called Spring Hope that, after each bombing run or mortar attack that destroyed one of their hospitals, metaphorically and physically shook the dust off their clothes, collected the patients who had survived and went further into the jungle to build a new one,” he recounts.
Eventually, they formalized themselves. In one community called Karenni, the activists joined civil society leaders to create a State Consultative Council, founded on principles of inclusivity, dignity and unity. Efforts have been made to ensure that the council’s executive body is representative of the different forces active in Karenni: political, popular defense forces and civil society (with a particular focus on the participation of women).
Petrie ends with a call to international aid organizations to engage with these new local governance structures, and be willing to support open-ended, formative work (such as the development of methods of community consultation) rather than well-defined outcomes (such as schools, hospitals and food distribution). It also would necessitate a willingness to let the people themselves decide who they trust, including nascent movements rather than established entities – a blind spot for many nonprofits, not just iNGOs. (To explore this idea further, read the interview I did with Iain Walker about the possibility of a type of citizens’ governance in the Gaza Strip.)
- PB
