NGOs Mediating Peace: Promoting Inclusion in Myanmar’s Nationwide Ceasefire Negotiations. This book is being launched as part pf the K4DM Knowledge Marketplace 2023 in Bangkok at Chulalongkorn University, on Wednesday November 29th 2023.
BOOK LAUNCH
NGOs Mediating Peace: Promoting Inclusion in Myanmar’s Nationwide Ceasefire Negotiations
Palgrave Macmillan
Author: Julia Palmiano Federer
Date: 29th November 2023
Location: Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
https://link.springer.com/series/14395/books
Book Description
Can informal actors such as NGOs mediate peace agreements? If so, how does it work and what are the consequences for international peace mediation? This book tackles these questions and more through looking at the role of nongovernmental (NGO) mediators in promoting “inclusive peace” to negotiating parties in Myanmar’s Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) negotiations from 2011-2015. The author argues that NGO mediators, traditionally seen as part of civil society or as weak mediators with little power or leverage, have become established mediation actors alongside more formal actors and are redefining the mediation field through norm promotion. However, even if NGO mediators can promote norms, the book questions whether they should promote norms in the first place, as the NCA process shows how the promotion of inclusivity contributed to a more exclusive outcome of years of peace negotiations in Myanmar. The outcome of the NCA process presents a critical and cautionary tale of promoting a presumed universal norm into a given locale and expecting a certain outcome without understanding how an external norm interacts with existing normative frameworks. This is an open access book.
Author Bio:
Julia Palmiano Federer is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa and the Head of Research at the Ottawa Dialogue. She is also currently a Senior Fellow at the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Basel and a Masters in International Affairs from The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.
She has published in leading journals in conflict resolution and mediation, such as International Journal, Negotiation Journal, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding and Politics and Governance. Her policy research has been published by peacebuilding and mediation organizations such as swisspeace, the Center for Security Studies ETH Zürich, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, the Norwegian Peacebuilding Research Center, the BRICs Policy Center and UN Women.
Her research interests include critical and feminist approaches to inclusive peace processes and unofficial peacemaking. Dr. Palmiano Federer has published academic articles and policy papers on diverse topics in mediation including inclusion, the Women Peace Security agenda and counter-terrorism, as well as on Myanmar politics. She is a Laureate of the 2022 Women, Peace and Security Research Awards for her work on women, peace, security and climate change. She was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver).
This book is part of the Palgrave Macmillan book series: Twenty-first Century Perspectives on War, Peace, and Human Conflict