Everyday Justice In Myanmar

Download or read book Everyday Justice in Myanmar written by Helene Maria Kyed and published by Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores how ordinary people in present-day Myanmar obtain justice and resolve disputes and crimes in a time of contested transition in government, politics, society, and the economy. Its empirical questions serve as a lens to analyze the wider dynamics of state making, the role of identity politics, and the constitution of authority in a country emerging from decades of military rule and civil war. Based on a unique collection of ethnographic studies with ordinary people's experiences to the fore, its contributions illustrate that legal pluralism exists in urban as well as rural contexts: from the cities of Yangon and Mawlamyine to the Naga hills, the Pa-O self-administered zone, the Thai refugee camps, and villages in the Karen and Mon states. In all of these places, the official state system is only one among many avenues for people seeking resolution in criminal and civil cases. Indeed, a common practice is to evade the state whenever possible. Most people prefer local and informal resolutions, and therefore the main actors consulted in everyday justice are village elders, local administrators, religious leaders, spiritual actors, and the justice systems or individual members of ethnic organizations. Prevailing are also a range of alternative understandings of (in)justice, misfortunes, and disputes that differ from those of the state-legal system. These alternatives are based on different cultural norms, religious beliefs, and forms of identification. Despite the ongoing transition in Myanmar, the long history of military rule and conflicts based on ethnic divisions continue to foster a mistrust in the state and an orientation towards 'the local' in everyday justice. The book explores these forms of state evasion and what it means more broadly for state-society relations in the current transition.

Download or read book The Significance of Everyday Access to Justice in Myanmar’s Transition to Democracy written by Helene Maria Kyed and published by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legal pluralism in Myanmar is a reality that is not sufficiently recognized. A lack of recognition of and clear mandates for the informal justice providers, along with the absence of coordination between these providers and the judiciary, present critical challenges to local dispute resolution and informal legal systems. This results in a high level of unpredictability and insecurity concerning the justice outcomes and in the underreporting of cases. The lack of jurisdictional clarity represents an even greater challenge in areas of mixed control and where numerous armed actors are present. Discussion of reform of the justice sector in Myanmar and debates surrounding peace negotiations and the role of the ethnic armed groups in service provision are separated. This situation reinforces the divide between ceasefire areas and the rest of the country and raises concern that the improvement of justice systems will leave conflict-affected populations behind. Recognition of and support for community-based dispute resolution are crucial to reducing the escalation of conflict at the local level. Justice systems like those of ethnic armed groups can contribute significantly to stability and order at times when the official system has limited territorial reach and is mistrusted by civilians.

Download or read book Opposing the Rule of Law written by Nick Cheesman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-12 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A striking new analysis of Myanmar's court system, revealing how the rule of law is 'lexically present but semantically absent'.

Download or read book Myanmar Transformed? written by Justine Chambers and published by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The triumph of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy at the 2015 election was supposed to mark the consolidation of a reformist trajectory for Myanmar society. What has followed has not proved so straightforward. This book takes stock of the mutations, continuities and fractures at the heart of today’s political and economic transformations. We ask: What has changed under a democratically elected government? Where are the obstacles to reform? And is there scope to foster a more prosperous and inclusive Myanmar? With the peace process faltering, over 1 million people displaced by recent violence, and ongoing army dominance in key areas of decision-making, the chapters in this volume identify areas of possible reform within the constraints of Myanmar’s hybrid civil–military governance arrangements. This latest volume in the Myanmar Update Series from the Australian National University continues a long tradition of intense, critical engagement with political, economic and social questions in one of Southeast Asia’s most complicated countries. At a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, the 13 chapters of Myanmar Transformed? offer new and alternative ways to understand Myanmar and its people.

Download or read book Myanmar written by Adam Simpson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-14 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a sophisticated, yet accessible, overview of the key political, economic and social challenges facing contemporary Myanmar and explains the complex historical and ethnic dynamics that have shaped the country. With clear and incisive contributions from the world’s leading Myanmar scholars, this book assesses the policies and political reforms that have provoked contestation in Myanmar’s recent history and driven both economic and social change. In this context, questions of economic ownership and control and the distribution of natural resources are shown to be deeply informed by long-standing fractures among ethnic and civil-military relations. The chapters analyse the key issues that constrain or expedite societal development in Myanmar and place recent events of national and international significance in the context of its complex history and social relations. In doing so, the book demonstrates that ethnic and cultural diversity is at the core of Myanmar’s society and heavily influences all aspects of life in the country. Filling a gap in the market, this research textbook and primer will be of interest to upper undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars of Southeast Asian politics, economics and society and to journalists and professionals working within governments, companies and other organisations.

Download or read book Myanmar's Enemy Within written by Francis Wade and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades Myanmar has been portrayed as a case of good citizen versus bad regime – men in jackboots maintaining a suffocating rule over a majority Buddhist population beholden to the ideals of non-violence and tolerance. But in recent years this narrative has been upended. In June 2012, violence between Buddhists and Muslims erupted in western Myanmar, pointing to a growing divide between religious communities that before had received little attention from the outside world. Attacks on Muslims soon spread across the country, leaving hundreds dead, entire neighbourhoods turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of Muslims confined to internment camps. This violence, breaking out amid the passage to democracy, was spurred on by monks, pro-democracy activists and even politicians. In this gripping and deeply reported account, Francis Wade explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar’s case, some of the most respected and articulate voices for democracy have turned on the Muslim population at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century.

Download or read book Pathways that Changed Myanmar written by Matthew Mullen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the midst of the political upheavals that engulfed Myanmar from 2010 to 2011, international attention was fixed upon the military regime and its dissident opponents. But away from the cameras, a very different set of struggles were unfolding across the country. These struggles were manifested not as violent clashes, but as everyday interactions involving taxi drivers, community organizers, farmers, heads of domestic NGOs, and many more. A product of five years' research, during which the author conducted over five hundred ethnographic interviews across the country, Pathways that Changed Myanmar provides a voice for those ordinary Burmese whose trials and aspirations went unheard and unnoticed during this pivotal moment in the nation's history.