US President Barack Obama has taken a lot of flak for his response to Russia’s swift, and illegal, annexation of Crimea. Among much criticism, his big “contest of ideas” speech, delivered in Brussels last Wednesday, was dismissed as “anemic” by New York Times columnist Roger Cohen and panned by many others. I don’t accept that verdict, but I do think the president could have made a clearer statement of local and global responsibilities in the twenty-first century.

Obama opened by reminding his audience of European youth that this is “a moment of testing for Europe and the United States, and for the international order that we have worked for generations to build”. He went on to say that “we must never take for granted the progress that has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world, because the contest of ideas continues for your generation”. He made explicit reference to “an international system that protects the rights of both nations and people – a United Nations and a Universal Declaration of Human Rights; international law and the means to enforce those laws”. He noted that difficult issues of sovereignty and self-determination “must be addressed through constitutional means and international laws so that majorities cannot simply suppress minorities, and big countries cannot simply bully the small”. So far, so good.

In addressing the current crisis, however, Obama spelt out his position in these terms: “Make no mistake: Neither the United States, nor Europe has any interest in controlling Ukraine. We have sent no troops there. What we want is for the Ukrainian people to make their own decisions, just like other free people around the world.” This is, however, only part of what we want. The missing caveat is that we want it to happen in conformity with the framework of international law and human rights acknowledged in earlier segments of the speech.

The importance of this omission becomes clear in the Myanmar context. For sure we want the Myanmar people to make their own decisions, and every effort must be made to deliver real local control of local affairs. But if they stray onto Mann’s dark side of democracy and engage in practices that violate international law and fall far short of global human rights standards, then we want to be able first to point out those shortfalls and next, if absolutely necessary, to act to address them. Fully establishing these norms throughout the contemporary world is also part of the contest of ideas.

Last Thursday, the UN Human Rights Council took up the issue of the savage ending to Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009. By a vote of 23 for and 12 against, with 12 abstentions, it endorsed a motion calling on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct a comprehensive investigation into alleged serious human rights violations committed by the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels. Two permanent members of the Security Council, China and Russia, voted against.

In actual fact, it is highly unlikely that a full probe will ever be conducted. The Sri Lankan government has resisted such action in the past, and has already signaled an unwillingness to cooperate with the UN now. Its ambassador to the Rights Council argued that “The draft resolution, if adopted, would not only constitute a serious breach of international law, but would create a dangerous precedent in the conduct of international relations and could pose a threat to the sovereignty and independence of Member States”. Nevertheless, this remains an important vote both in itself and for Myanmar.

It is significant in itself because it marks another step in global policing of atrocity crimes. Faced with plausible evidence of 40,000 civilian deaths during a desperate denouement in Sri Lanka, the Rights Council motion requires that a plausible account be drawn up of events and responsibilities. In addition, it calls for ongoing monitoring of a state characterized by growing militarization, illegal land grabs, tightening curbs on civil society, and rising religious intolerance.

The vote also resonates in Myanmar. Senior General Than Shwe’s four-day state visit to Sri Lanka in November 2009 was widely seen as affirming close tatmadaw interest in the Sri Lankan model for resolving ethnic conflict. Fortunately, circumstances have thus far taken a different path, and Myanmar today stands in sight of a nationwide peace accord. Whatever transpires, though, the shadow of war crime allegations will hang over the country, and one day will need to be addressed. More immediately, credible reports that such crimes are still being witnessed particularly in sectarian clashes in Rakhine State need to be properly examined.

UN demands for accountability issued from Geneva do not constitute a comprehensive humanitarian response to alleged atrocity crimes. Often they fall far short of the objectives mapped by their sponsors. Equally, though, they do register, do matter, and do form a necessary part of international engagement with egregious forms of human rights abuse.

No more than a few months ago, on December 17, 2013, the UN launched a fresh initiative to boost human rights safeguards around the world. Rights up Front is a direct result of experience at the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009, and an indirect consequence of harrowing humanitarian disasters in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the mid-1990s.

In Sri Lanka, a 26-year conflict between the national army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (or Tamil Tigers) reached an explosive conclusion in May 2009. Some 40,000 civilians are thought to have died during brutal government bombing campaigns even targeting hospitals. Aid agency personnel, including a significant UN contingent, were forced out of the main war zone and unable to respond to, or convey, the full extent of the humanitarian crisis. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon thus invited Charles Petrie, currently leading MPSI, to chair an internal review panel. Its November 2012 report charged the UN with “systemic failure”.

Rights up Front is an attempt to address that lapse. It lists six actions designed to ensure that in future UN officials will be able to present evidence of abuse to host states and the UN Secretariat, and craft an effective response. Driving this approach is an awareness, fed by many historical lessons, of the importance of detecting early warning signs of potential mass atrocities.

Standing behind Rights up Front are the UN’s three R2P pillars. One, states are responsible for protecting all citizens from four designated mass atrocity crimes. Two, in cases of apparent slippage the international community must remind states of their responsibilities and offer assistance. Three, when faced with state inability or unwillingness to fulfill its duty of protection, the international community must step in.

Myanmar is currently a pillar two R2P state, with mounting evidence of especially troubling conditions in Rakhine State. Urgent human rights concern is properly being voiced in international society, through for instance a US congressional panel that met last week. As the situation inside the country unfolds, however, a necessary requirement for global monitoring is access to accurate information on the ground. A necessary condition of protection is presence.

At a time when first MSF and then other aid agencies are being driven from Rakhine State by aggressive public protest sometimes descending into violence, a UN mission is absolutely indispensable. Without that, it is impossible to implement the Rights up Front policy of relaying any evidence of atrocity crimes to relevant authorities inside and outside Myanmar, and mounting an appropriate response. Working closely with central and provincial officials to sustain the UN mandate is therefore now a top priority of international engagement.

Data collection for Myanmar’s 2014 census will commence on Sunday, and for 12 days until April 10 enumerators will fan out across the country in an attempt to generate a total population count. In fact, the exercise is already complete in a small number of peripheral communities. For the bulk of the people, however, work on the national inventory is about to begin. Today I have a historical footnote relating to the last of the British censuses.

One question has puzzled me recently. Why did the final British census take place in 1931, rather than in 1941? After all, the Japanese did not enter the world war until the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. They did not target Burma until later that month, with the first bombs falling on Rangoon on December 23 and 25. The full occupation did not take place until 1942. What was it, then, that prevented the British from carrying out their decennial census?

I asked Derek Tonkin at Network Myanmar about this, and he pointed me to two complementary answers. One appears in a note to a table on page 42 of Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma by Mary P Callahan, published in 2003: “data from the 1941 census was lost in World War II”. The other appears on page 24 of Burmese Economic Life by J Russell Andrus, issued 10 days after Burmese independence on January 14, 1948: “Unfortunately the 1941 Census Officer remained in Burma during the evacuation of 1942, and with him remained almost all data except for two pages.” So the 1941 British census did take place, but just about everything in it disappeared under the Japanese occupation. Nevertheless, one important statistic did survive. This was the overall population count of 16,823,798, up 15 percent from 14,647,756 in 1931.

Andrus also notes that British census takers never did make it to every corner of Burma. This is from page 23 of his book: “even in 1941 the Census covered but 233,492 of Burma’s 261,610 square miles, the remainder being wild, inaccessible areas in the northeast and north, believed to have a very sparse population”. A little more than 10 percent of the territory thus evaded full documentation throughout the colonial period.

Finally, it’s perhaps unfair to cite judgments that have not stood the test of time – I certainly have some on my record. For what it’s worth, though, here is an assessment Andrus reaches (on page 22) at the very moment of independence: “Burma, with the exception of some hill areas, is fortunate in having a fairly homogenous population, without the communal problems which afflict some neighboring countries. This is partially due to the geographic barriers provided by the surrounding mountains and partially to the fact that the Burmans appear largely to have ‘liquidated’ a large proportion of the races previously inhabiting Burma, and to have absorbed most of the remainder.”

Where to look for inspiration when Myanmar’s peace process shifts into the critical phase of political dialogue and options for a federal future are debated? There’s no obvious reason to turn to Italy – except that it has one very successful experience of accommodating ethnic diversity.

In 1919, during the fallout from the Great War, Italy annexed a parcel of land that for centuries had been part of the Germanic world, and latterly had belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Though not in any organic sense Italian, the region’s new geopolitical status was endorsed by peace conferences at the end of both the First and Second World Wars. In Italian, it is currently known as Trentino-Alto Adige. (In German, Alto Adige is Südtirol. In English, it is South Tyrol.)

The early years were by no means easy. A population that was 92 percent German speaking in 1910 did not readily submit to the change of sovereignty, and tensions increased during a harsh Italianization campaign implemented by Benito Mussolini in the 1930s. From 1956 to 1988, ethnic German separatists unleashed terrorist attacks averaging more than 10 incidents per year. Today, by contrast, the region is broadly reconciled to its place in the world. How did this happen?

Celestine Bohlen’s article on South Tyrol in Monday’s New York Times notes that a 1972 autonomy deal granting extensive self-rule was the key move. Today the decentralized government, run by a German-speaking party, manages almost all of the public sector (though not the police force). It controls 90 percent of regional tax revenue. In a community with 62 percent German speakers and 23 percent Italian speakers, language policy is fully bilingual.

To explain how the 1972 deal was struck, Bohlen quotes local retailer Karl Bernardi. “Everyone had to renounce their own egoism. Above all, it required a will to compromise.”

I’m very grateful to Matt Walton for responding in two guest posts the week before last to my analysis of ethnicity and race in Myanmar. As ever, his thinking is rich and stimulating. At the same time, though, I feel more remains to be said, and again I’m writing to work my way through that. Perhaps the easiest way to explain myself is as follows.

It’s possible to imagine the main objections Matt raises in his posts also being directed at a proponent of US critical race theory, on which he drew in his original article. First, the concept of race is rather vague. Does it relate to nationality, skin colour, religion, or language and other cultural practices? Second, alongside purported racial discrimination the US has many other forms of privilege and oppression. Women are disadvantaged, and it’s clearly much more beneficial to be a WASP male than any other form of whiteness.

Equally, the reply of the critical race theorist can be anticipated. One, in use here is a specific understanding (cited in Matt’s essay and repeated in my post) of race as an ascriptive category generated by physical characteristics beyond individual control. Two, whilst the US certainly is characterized by many forms of privilege and oppression, racial discrimination is uniquely important. It resulted in slavery before the Civil War, brutally repressive Jim Crow laws for a century after Reconstruction, and continuing structural disadvantage even after the triumphs of the civil rights movement.

I believe parallel arguments can be made about Myanmar today. For sure being a Bamar Buddhist male is the best position to be in, and many forms of disadvantage play off that core normative identity. But there is a particularly damaging line separating Rohingyas from everyone else. To my mind, the only satisfactory way to describe this latter state of affairs is racial discrimination.

On my further point that some other Muslims are being tainted by association with Rohingyas – yes, clearly the category is religious, not racial. But I don’t see this as a conceptual confusion. Rather, it builds on demonstrable empirical fact to argue that racial discrimination directed at Rohingyas is now so potent that anyone linked to them either by blood (South Asian) or by religion (Muslim) is in danger of being subjected to similar forms of oppression.

Again, I greatly appreciate Matt’s willingness to debate these issues with me. I join him in hoping others will add to the perspectives each of us has presented over the past three weeks.

Hopes remain high in Myanmar that a nationwide ceasefire will soon pave the way for political dialogue focused on accommodating ethnic diversity in this hugely complex state. Taking stock of where we are now with the peace process is a “lessons learned” report released last week by the Myanmar Peace Support Initiative. MPSI is led by Charles Petrie, former UN resident and humanitarian coordinator. Ashley South acts as consultant. Its evaluation covers two years since March 2012, when the Norwegian government responded to a request from the Myanmar government to support the peace process, and MPSI came into being.

This is a dense report running to 46 pages of executive summary and main findings, plus another 46 pages of annexes. It’s not for the faint-hearted. For anyone interested in figuring out the peace process from somewhere close to the inside, though, it’s a must-read. Formally, it surveys MPSI activity in helping to build trust and confidence in ceasefires, testing the robustness of agreements, and strengthening local and international coordination of peace process support mechanisms. Informally, it opens a window onto a much larger understanding of the evolving peace agenda.

In the past two years, MPSI has worked in five states (Chin, Kayah, Kayin, Mon, Shan) and two regions (Bago, Tanintharyi) with comprehensive sets of stakeholders, including seven ethnic armed groups. What has it learned? There is much solid information in the report. Ethnic armed groups are increasingly proactive and creative in engaging with the peace process. Women are under-represented. Although real progress has been made, the full process may well extend until 2020. Major problems, for instance in Rakhine State, could still disrupt everything. Above all, for peripheral communities long scarred by conflict, life is improving in tangible ways as displaced families begin to return to their villages, identity cards become more readily available, opportunities for dialogue open up, and everyday existence becomes somewhat safer and more prosperous.

Equally useful is the overall argument advanced in the report, which at base addresses the role of external agents. There are many important tips. Context is key. Consultation must be meaningful. Flexibility is essential. Local capacity must be acknowledged and reinforced. Engagement in the peace process must be broad. Coordination and funding should have a practical orientation. An inclusive national peace process is the ultimate goal. However, the essence of the argument resides in a single sentence: “Fundamentally the peace process is indigenous to Myanmar, locally owned and led, with limited roles for international intervention.” This core MPSI lesson of course has far wider application.

Crimea’s secession renews discussion of the right to self-determination. The EU and US condemned the enabling referendum as illegal because it violated Ukraine’s constitution and was conducted under duress of Russia’s military presence. But when do people have the right to choose their sovereignty? Key recent cases of independence referenda and remedial secession are relevant to Burma today.

In Canada, referenda on Quebec independence were held in 1980 and 1995. In the UK, the question of Scottish independence will be put to a vote this coming September. While democratic regimes do not guarantee the right to self-determination, these two cases demonstrate that some governments prioritize popular consent over territorial integrity.

In Kosovo, an argument for secession was tied to gross human rights abuse inflicted by sovereign power Serbia. This was said to generate a right of remedial secession derived from the UN General Assembly’s October 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States. The “saving clause” of the 1970 Declaration obliges each state to represent the whole of its people without discrimination on the basis of race, creed or colour. A right to remedial secession can be held to flow from a failure to do that. In 2008, the International Court of Justice was asked by the UN General Assembly to render an advisory opinion on Kosovo. Its ruling two years later disappointed many. Avoiding the argument of remedial secession, it shifted the focus from a right to self-determination to a right to declare independence. Today Kosovo has a disputed status.

In Burma, discussion of federation and secession has been ongoing since the 1940s. The 1947 Panglong Agreement, signed by the Burmese government and Shan, Kachin and Chin representatives, promised future autonomy for Frontier Area peoples. After the 1962 military coup, however, the tatmadaw slogan “One Party, One Blood, One Voice and One Command” displayed the regime’s hostility towards ethnic nationals. Widespread human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killing, forced labour, forced displacement, rape and property extraction, have long been reported in ethnic states. While grounds for remedial secession have thus been strong, hope for peaceful separation from Burma has been slim. With ethnic groups able to choose only between submission to the military government and armed defence, Burma became trapped in a vicious cycle of oppression and civil war.

As Burma’s democratization continues, and the peace process unfolds, it is important that ethnic nationals’ right to self-determination be respected. Full democracy is a necessary condition for minority peoples to exert control over their political destinies. However, the issue of their future status should not be lost in wider reform debates. If Naypyitaw truly respects the rights of its disparate peoples, any constitutional overhaul should pay close attention to global efforts to deliver self-determination for ethnic nationals.

Debby Chan is a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong.

It’s taken me a while to follow up on a brief but intriguing item published in the Irrawaddy on March 11, and subsequently reported in the Myanmar Times on March 17. I wasn’t able immediately to track down the information behind it, and am thus posting about it only now. Run under the headline “45 NGOs warn UN on lack of human right progress in Burma”, this is the Irrawaddy story in full:

“Forty five Burmese civil society organizations have written an open letter to the UN Human Rights Council ahead of its session in Geneva on March 17. The groups caution the council on the lack of progress in respecting human rights in Burma, particularly where it concerns the Rohingya minority, and warn of backsliding on reforms. They urge the council to maintain the comprehensive mandate of Special Rapporteur on human rights in Burma after the current rapporteur, Tomás Ojea Quintana, leaves this month. The groups also advocate establishing a permanent UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights presence in the country.”

Sure enough, there is an open letter making these arguments and carrying endorsements from 45 civil society organizations – in fact 46, because the Burma Partnership, which is the actual signatory, is not counted in the 45. I found a full copy on the Facebook page of the Burma Campaign Australia. The header given to it is “Open letter from Myanmar/Burma civil society to the member states of the United Nations Human Rights Council”. However, to hold that the 46 organizations are from Myanmar, as do both the letter and the story, is a bit of a stretch.

In the list appended to the statement, there are five groups that I cannot place, though my guess in each case is that their main office is not inside Myanmar. Of the remaining 41, 28 are based in other parts of Southeast Asia (often Chiang Mai or Mae Sot, Thailand), and 13 operate from much more distant corners of the world. As far as I can therefore tell, while all of the organizations have strong links to Myanmar, and some are deeply engaged in important cross-border work, none is currently headquartered inside the country.

This strikes me as odd. Ever since Cyclone Nargis struck in May 2008, there has been a major revival of the non-profit sector initially in affected areas of the Ayeyarwady Delta, and later in other parts of Myanmar. Isn’t it time, then, for external bodies (particularly the likes of Burma Action Ireland, the Burma Campaign Australia and the Burma Campaign UK) to stop passing themselves off as “Myanmar/Burma civil society”?

On March 15, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect released its latest bimonthly bulletin. In 14 issues of R2P Monitor produced to date, it profiles states within three categories: current crisis, imminent risk, and serious concern. Four countries are now at the top level of current crisis: Syria, Central African Republic, Sudan, and South Sudan. Three are one tier below at the intermediate level of imminent risk: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, and Nigeria. By this measure, Myanmar is one of the seven most troubling states in the world.

Imminent risk is defined as follows: “The situation is reaching a critical threshold and the risk of mass atrocity crimes occurring in the immediate future is very high if effective preventive action is not taken.” The evaluation of Myanmar is straightforward: “The government of Burma/Myanmar is failing to uphold its Responsibility to Protect.” To support this judgment, GCR2P cites evidence relating primarily to the situation in Rakhine State, as well as to anti-Muslim violence in other parts of the country and ethnic conflict in peripheral areas.

The global R2P norm, unanimously adopted by member states at the 2005 UN World Summit, focuses on four mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Pillar 1 vests in states the responsibility to protect their populations from these crimes. Pillar 2 entrusts the international community with the responsibility to encourage and assist states to meet their Pillar 1 responsibility. Pillar 3 confers on the international community the responsibility to take timely and decisive action should any state be unable or unwilling to fulfill its Pillar 1 responsibility.

GCR2P calls on the Myanmar government to deliver on its Pillar 1 responsibility by ending endemic discrimination against Rohingyas, facilitating the safe voluntary return of internally displaced persons to their communities, allowing unhindered humanitarian access throughout the country, engaging in constitutional reform to address the needs of ethnic minorities, and creating an independent judiciary. It advises the international community to urge the government to develop a comprehensive plan for inclusive national reconciliation.

It’s not clear how this long list of demands relates to the four mass atrocity crimes. Better, I think, is the UN Special Rapporteur’s sharper contention that crimes against humanity may have been committed in Rakhine State. To remind both the Myanmar government and the international community of commitments made at the World Summit nearly a decade ago, GCR2P does not need to reach beyond this.

Moreover, whilst that reminder is timely, it’s not going to cut much ice with either the government or many (probably most) of the people of Myanmar if simply uploaded to the internet from New York’s Fifth Avenue. For GCR2P to have a positive impact, it has to develop a robust strategy for local engagement. Absent that, its chance of being part of the solution inside the country can charitably be put at zero.