Description:
Executive summary: "This briefing paper assesses the trajectory and significance of resource conflict risks and threat
multipliers in Myanmar. The principal findings include:
1. Despite poor institutional settings, increased foreign direct investment is unlikely in of itself
to increase local or regional resource conflict.i Investment industry, type of local business
partners, ability to secure social licence, and specific project footprints will all shape the
contribution of FDI to resource conflict...
2. Select armed ethnic group?s demands for a federal political system are highly likely to
intensify in absence of public finance reform, more transparent resource revenue management
and greater fiscal devolution to states hosting projects. This is likely to result in the fracturing of
some ceasefire agreements, increased ethno-religious communal violence, localised project
sabotage and magnified security risks for business investments...
3. Increasing military securitisation of key energy infrastructure assets, such as pipelines and
hydrodams, is highly likely. They are the lifeblood of Myanmar?s fragile economy and will
continue to be strategic targets if project revenues are allocated solely to the military and
military-affiliated businesses...
4. Armed ethnic groups, particularly in Kachin and Shan states, are likely to attempt expelling
the Tatmadaw (Myanmar armed forces) from these positions or engage in project sabotage
in response to land seizures, human rights abuses, environmental degradation and arbitrary
arrests...
5. The number of internally displaced persons is unlikely to decrease in the next 12 months,
and those trying to return home are likely to experience continued dislocation from land as
a result of opportunistic land grabs...
6. Protests over land grabs and particular infrastructure projects are likely to escalate if
parliament does not act on the recommendations of the Farm Land Commission...
7. Conflation of localised, isolated or project-based resource conflicts within broader ethnoreligious
confrontations and communal violence is could possibly be a threat multiplier and
expand the geographic scope of conflict...
8. Armed ethnic groups or nationalist forces could possibly exploit local conflicts and marshal
existing tensions around religion, nationalism, development disparity and ethno-political
competition to attempt nationalising conflict as a strategy to leverage greater political
power. However, the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and elements
of the military could possibly attempt to mitigate this risk through a divide and conquer
strategy to reduce any existing semblance of ethnic group solidarity."
Source/publisher:
Open Briefing
Date of Publication:
2014-00-00
Date of entry:
2016-03-04
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Language:
English
Local URL:
Format:
pdf pdf
Size:
701.58 KB 2.85 MB