11 - Everyday peace: after ethnic cleansing in Myanmar’s Rohingya conflict

Summary

Summary

The theory of everyday peace and its relevance at a theoretical level to community development in conflict-affected contexts was presented in Chapter 2. In this chapter, the authors explore and build on this theory to discuss their attempts to operationalise it into community development practice in Rakhine State, Myanmar – a region that has seen significant intercommunal and armed conflict in recent years, resulting in two-thirds of the Rohingya population being driven into Bangladesh in an act of ethnic cleansing. This chapter explores ways in which the principles and typologies of ‘everyday peace’ are being translated into community development practice by Vicki-Ann and Anthony Ware and evaluated by Leanne Kelly, in a programme working to strengthen peace formation between villages of Rohingya Muslim remaining in Myanmar and their Rakhine Buddhist neighbours. The authors draw from both their academic perspective and their grounded experience of the practice put in place during this programme of work. The case study demonstrates the conclusion that community development approaches can offer a strong foundation on which to scaffold an everyday peace framework that, in turn, supports the building of inclusive relationships and more peaceful coexistence.

Introduction

Our earlier chapter in this volume explored the concepts of ‘the everyday’ and ‘everyday peace’ in depth. We argued that the key innovations of everyday peace make it ideal for community development in conflict contexts, to achieve peacebuilding outcomes in the process of development. By definition, everyday peace adopts a bottom-up view, so community development’s focus on locally led initiatives, active participation and subsidiarity provide theory and tools that support the strengthening of everyday peace. Everyday peace redefines behaviours usually perceived as negative, such as avoidance, ambiguity or blame-shifting, as potentially positive practices, and recognises that even in the most violent conflict situations a majority of ordinary people already resist the most extreme narratives and engage in some conflictcalming measures. Both of these directly facilitate appreciative inquiry (see Chapter 2 and Elliott, 1999; Bushe, 2011) and fit well with community development principles. They also break down the false dichotomy that wants to distinguish between negative and positive peace, focusing instead on agency and resistance. Everyday peace thus offers a robust framework with a range of innovations that fit very well with community development practice.