Sectoral Policy Recommendations for Building a Future Federal Democratic Union (Draft)
Introduction
It is a great pleasure to publish the 3rd edition of Sectoral Policy Recommendations for Building a Future Federal Democratic Union. With leaders and representatives from ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), ethnic political parties (EPPs), community based organizations (CBOs), civil society organizations (CSOs) and Core Working Groups (CWGs)1, a workshop on moving forward with the 11 sectorial policy recommendations was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand in February 2018. Based on the discussions made from the workshop, the terminologies of “Interim Period” and “Refugees and IDPs” were re-defined more appropriately in this third edition. Moreover, changes to the format of the policy recommendations were also made for better clarity. To more easily distinguish it from the previous editions, the color of the third edition was also changed. However, the recommendations, guiding principles and other contents consisted in the book have not been amended.
This document is a collection of draft policies developed at a series of workshops organized by the Ethnic Nationalities Affairs Centre (ENAC). These policy drafts resulted from discussions and proposals made by EAOs2, EPPs, CBOs and CSOs who are participants in the peace process and are working to achieve a federal democratic union also during this interim period, which is the period from the signing of cease-fire agreements until the signing of a future final nationwide peace accord. The ENAC workshops were organized with the purpose of building common understandings among these diverse stakeholders regarding potential policies across a range of important sectors. These policy drafts were created from the proposals and discussions made by workshop participants from EAOs, EPPs, CBOs, CSOs, and relevant international and national experts from Burma/Myanmar. The policy workshops first started in December of 2014, and to date, a total of 11 policies have been developed.
In addition to the primary workshops, meetings to review and analyze the policy drafts were organized with participation from members of Core Working Groups (CWGs) assigned to different policy areas, as well as with leaders of EAOs. ENAC staff also traveled to different EAO administrative areas and presented the policy drafts to those responsible for specific policy areas, as well as representatives of CBOs and CSOs, in order to revise and improve the final draft policies.
On 29-30 May 2016, a final consultation workshop was held to present and compare different versions of all of the policy drafts, and to build common understandings of the revisions made to the earlier versions among the leaders of EAOs, EPPs, and members of CWGs. The United Nationalities Federal Council3 adopted the policy recommendations (draft) in June 2016. Afterward, recommendations on 9 policy sectors were published for the first time as the Sectoral Policy Recommendations for Building a Future Federal Democratic Union in June 2016.
To form a common understanding on the 9 sectoral policy recommendations (draft) ENAC conducted field consultations with representatives and leaders from the National League for Democracy (NLD), Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), EPPs, CSOs and CBOs in Mawlamyine, Pa-an, Keng Tong, Lashio, Taunggyi, Myitkyina, Sittwe, Loikaw, Dawei, Hakha and Kalay.
Feedbacks for improvement to the drafts from the field consultations were collected. Afterwards, ENAC organized an integration workshop on 29-31 August 2017 with representatives and leaders of EAOs, United Nationalities Alliance UNA4, and CWGs in order to integrate the feedback to the existing drafts and revise the recommendations as a whole. In addition to the 9 sectors of the policy recommendations, two more sectors on forest and environment, and energy were developed from workshops with representatives and leaders from EAOs, UNA, CSOs, and CBOs, and were added to the existing sectors.
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Please download PDF file here – Sectoral Policy Recommendations (English Version)