Strengthening everyday peace formation after ethnic cleansing: operationalising a framework in Myanmar’s Rohingya conflict

Abstract

The concept of everyday peace largely draws on research that, to date, has sought more to explain observed social practices than inform peace interventions. This paper presents a case study of an attempt to operationalise the concept into local non-governmental organisation (NGO) programming, seeking to strengthen the formation of everyday peace between Rohingya and Rakhine communities in Myanmar after recent ethnic cleansing. This is believed to be the first attempt to operationalise everyday peace into NGO practice. The programme incorporates everyday peace components into an existing bottom-up development programme based around Freirian conscientisation, seeking to raise critical awareness of eight social practices seen to constitute everyday peace practice: avoidance, watching/reading, ambiguity, shielding, civility, reciprocity, solidarity and compromise. The paper presents and analyses new field data collected two years into implementation, comprising interviews with 15 local NGO staff/facilitators, and 12 focus groups (gender-segregated) with 84 participants from both Rohingya and Rakhine villages. The paper finds evidence of increased utilisation of these social practices and improved inter-village relations, even in the absence of macro-level peace efforts. While no panacea, and not as yet addressing the deep inequalities, injustices and vulnerabilities between Rohingya and Rakhine communities, this paper finds the approach has contributed to peace formation in this context.

Keywords:

• Everyday peace
• peacebuilding
• critical awareness
• Freire
• Rohingya
• Myanmar

Introduction

Everyday peace is an emerging concept, built largely on research into the social practices naturally and commonly adopted by non-elite, ordinary people, as they seek to conduct their everyday lives in deeply divided settings in ways that minimise awkward and potentially volatile encounters (Brewer et al. 2018; Mac Ginty 2014, 2017; Ring 2006; Williams 2015). To date, it has sought more to describe and explain observed social practice than to prescribe or inform peace interventions – with the exception perhaps of Mac Ginty and Firchow’s (2016) everyday peace indicators project.

This paper presents the case study of an attempt to operationalise the concept into the practice of local non-governmental organisation (NGO) programming, to strengthen everyday peace formation in the context of Myanmar’s Rohingya conflict. It does so by incorporating everyday peace ideas into an established development programme that has been run by a local NGO for over a decade, facilitating participatory village-level planning and project implementation. The project site, in Rakhine State, Myanmar, is beset by multiple interrelated conflicts, and is deeply poverty-stricken, the poorest part of the country. The programme operates in townships proximate to those that recently experienced ethnic cleansing, which drove over a million Rohingya from Myanmar. The authors of this paper have variously assisted the local NGO in design, implementation and/or evaluation of this programme for some/all of the past decade, including the recent addition of everyday peace components.

The programme examined here works with pairs of adjacent villages – one Rohingya Muslim village with one ethnic Rakhine Buddhist village – and supports community-led participatory planning and implementation of mutually beneficial, small-scale development projects across the pair, along with locally planned, peace-oriented engagement activities. The pre-existing, decade-long programme revolves around training local facilitators, chosen by their villages, in participatory development practices, adopting a methodology developed from the Freirian concept of conscientisation (often called critical awareness-raising or consciousness-raising). Conscientisation describes a pedagogy seeking to facilitate people becoming critically aware of the nature and causes of things that oppress them, and the extent and limits of their agency to change their circumstances. The programme, as run for over a decade, adopts this as the basis of facilitator training, supporting facilitators to critically analyse themselves, the village’s assets/resources, needs and obstacles, and the extent of agency – then return to work in a similar manner with community members.

The recent iteration of the programme, since 2019, added ideas about everyday peace to conscientisation training, seeking to operationalise these new ideas into an expanded programme now aiming for local peace outcomes between adjacent villages, while working together on small-scale community-led development initiatives. The underlying principle is one of helping facilitators (and through them, villages) to better understand the nature and dynamics of the conflict they find themselves in, the everyday peace social practices they (or others in their village) already adopt to minimise the risk of violence or confrontation, and other practices they might choose to utilise to strengthen peaceful relations. The programme thus aims at careful strengthening of links with ‘the Other’, through consciousness of peace–conflict dynamics as they engage in highly participatory, intercommunal planning and implementation of mutually beneficial, local development projects. This case study is believed to be the first attempt to operationalise everyday peace into NGO programming in this manner.

This paper begins by introducing the everyday peace framework adopted, before describing the context and case study programme in some detail. The paper then outlines how the everyday peace framework was applied via conscientisation pedagogy, before providing preliminary evaluation data from the first two full years of the expanded programme, highlighting where these align with or raise questions about the framework. Our aim is not to provide rigorous analysis of the effectiveness of this programme but, more simply, to examine whether operationalisation of this framework in such a manner does indeed offer a way to generate positive change. As a result, the evaluation in this section of the paper focuses on positive examples of change, rather than a detailed examination of effectiveness. The paper concludes that this implementation appears to offer an effective form of bottom-up peacebuilding, at least in this case, with local benefits even in the absence of more comprehensive macro-level peace efforts. All data relates to pre-coup implementation, but anecdotal reports suggest further improvement in relations since then. This may have relevance for practice in other deeply divided societies.

Everyday peace social practices

For the purposes of this paper, we adopt Mac Ginty’s (2014, 549) definition of everyday peace, as

the routinized practices used by individuals and collectives as they navigate their way through life in a deeply divided society that may suffer from ethnic or religious cleavages and be prone to episodic direct violence in addition to chronic or structural violence.

Within this, ‘the everyday is regarded as the normal habitus for individuals and groups, even if what passed as “normal” in a conflict-affected society would be abnormal elsewhere’ (Mac Ginty 2014, 550).

Everyday peace research has grown out of ethnographic studies documenting various social practices ordinary people are observed to adopt, as they seek to get on with their lives in deeply divided contexts (see especially Ring (2006) and Williams (2015), but also many of the sources cited by Mac Ginty (2014) in his scoping of the concept). At its most minimal level, everyday peace may be simply ‘eking out safe space in a conflict context and allowing a façade of normality to prevail’ (Mac Ginty 2014, 555). While this, and many of the social practices outlined below, could be viewed as forms of negative peace, everyday peace challenges the binary between negative and positive peace (Williams 2015), reframing these as potential positive, agentic acts by ordinary people who feel they have very limited power to affect wider conflict dynamics (Brewer et al. 2018).

Even in the most deeply divided contexts, most people reject personal use of violence and most of the time actively avoid confrontation with the Other, even if they share the fears and grievances driving a conflict (and sometimes even tacitly or actively support the use of force by others). O’Driscoll (2021), for example, illustrates this in the everyday interactions between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen in an Iraq market. Everyday peace proponents argue this resistance to conflict narratives that justify and urge violence is an act of significant agency, often involving considerable courage, innovation and improvisation, by people who otherwise have limited agency (Mac Ginty 2014). Ring (2006, 3) points out the ‘relentless creative labour’ required to sustain everyday peace, and Williams (2015) describes everyday peace as active, dynamic, micro-political negotiation at the everyday level.

Everyday peace does not presuppose altruistic motivations. People opt for non-violence, non-escalation or peaceful coexistence with neighbours for a diversity of reasons, ranging from pure self-preservation through to a deep commitment to shared humanity (Brewer et al. 2018; Mac Ginty 2014). Many who act for everyday peace share at least some of the fears, grievances and prejudices of those urging violence and harm. Yet to resist powerful forces in quiet, subtle, routinised ways requires deliberate, thoughtful effort to minimise risk, de-escalate situations and establish amicable coexistence. It thus ruptures rigid and totalising notions of homogeneous identities, demonstrating heterogeneity and highlighting how micro-solidarities hold the potential to transform conflict narratives and build peace from the bottom up, complementing formal approaches to peacebuilding (Mac Ginty 2014).

No matter the motivation, the fact that a large proportion of the population opt for non-violence – and thus already engage in everyday peace practices – offers a potential foundation for peacebuilding interventions that adopt an appreciative inquiry, strengths-based approach. Indeed, Brewer et al. (2018) argue the ‘mundane logic’ or ‘pragmatic reasoning’ of people who have experienced violence leads most to conclude non-violence offers better hope for their future, and that of their children and communities. This pragmatic choice of non-violence over violence, of a ‘social imaginary’ (Lederach 2003) that peaceable co-existence is the best path to a better future, is the foundation for resistance to conflict narratives, and the exercise of agency to find social practices that establish everyday peace. However, despite its potential as a foundation for bottom-up peacebuilding, everyday peace does not appear to have translated into a practice framework for NGO programme design until now.

A growing academic literature has catalogued observations of social practices adopted by ordinary people to avoid or de-escalate awkward or risky encounters, or sometimes even deliberately seek to deepen their engagement with other conflict parties – see Berents (2015, 2018); Berents and McEvoy-Levy (2015); Dutta, Andzenge, and Walkling (2016); Mac Ginty and Firchow (2016); Marijan (2017); Randazzo (2016); Richmond (2009); Ring (2006); Williams (2015); Visoka (2020); Yoshizawa and Kusaka (2020). Nonetheless, scholars widely call for more detailed empirical research into local, everyday peacebuilding, to produce evidence that might inform (amongst other things) development and humanitarian interventions, peacebuilding and promotion of human rights (Richmond 2020; also Paffenholz 2015; Öjendal and Ou 2015).

Mac Ginty (2014, 555) is notable for having published a ‘rudimentary’ typology of social practices believed to constitute everyday peace. While deeply insightful and widely cited, we note this was framed as preliminary ‘conceptual scoping’ (Mac Ginty 2014, 548). We note that other, detailed ethnographic research on everyday peace, particularly that of Ring (2006) and Williams (2015), documents additional social practices beyond this typology – particularly practices widely adopted by those seeking to go beyond avoidance strategies to deliberately engage with other conflict parties, as cautious choices to further peace.

Based on this wider literature and a decade of empirical practice in Myanmar, we have elsewhere expanded on Mac Ginty, and proposed a revised typology of everyday peace social practices (Ware and Ware 2021). That paper provides detailed argument for and discussion of the detail of these social practices, which are used as the basis for the analysis in the latter half of the current paper. This expanded typology was the one adopted by the NGO for this case study, and posits that everyday peace is constituted by the eight social practices summarised in Table 1.

Table 1. Types of social practice that constitute everyday peace.

Avoidance: Contentious or sensitive topics, talk of historic issues High-risk people, places, situations, offensive displays Escapism into other activities Not drawing attention to oneself

Watching/reading: Ethnically informed identification and social ordering Sensitised alertness, to avoid/engage without provocation Constantly judging motives, morals, attitudes and feelings of others

Ambiguity: Discarding or concealing signifiers of identity Non-observance, ‘not seeing’ Dissembling in speech and actions

Shielding: Keeping more volatile and aggressive people away from confrontations More peaceful dealing with confrontations themselves Using overt displays of anger and hostility, to ensure peaceful outcomes

Civility: Interactions in shared public spaces, especially transactional economic engagements Ritualised politeness, attention to the etiquette of status Acts of tolerance Shifting blame to outsiders, some within own group, or the system

Reciprocity: Neighbourliness and sociality based on exchange of gifts, assistance Expectation of delayed reciprocity, mutual indebtedness Active maintenance, nonresolution of exchange tension Type of exchange normally reserved for kin

Solidarity: Intercommunal networking around everyday issues Groups engaged in cooperation and accommodation ‘Imagined community’, even if rhetorical or discursive, narratives of communal harmony

Compromise: Sustained dialogue, negotiation, conflict resolution Renunciation, submission, surrender, compromise or acceptance as acts of agency Justice conceded or suspended for status quo Peace contingent on concealing patterns of inequality and uneven power

This is not to suggest everyday peace is a panacea. Practices normalising things like avoidance can entrench discrimination, and may strengthen the same forces that institutionalise rigid identities and sectarian cultures (Williams 2015). And while peace, at any level, involves compromise or surrender, these are almost invariably acts of the less powerful. When everyday conflict does occur, it is usually perpetrated by those with the most power or ‘symbolic capital’, and can involve manipulative destabilisation to enhance personal or group power (Williams 2015; O’Driscoll 2021). What is called compromise is more often domination and coercion than free agency motivated by an ideal of peaceful relations. Everyday peace may thus be contingent on concealing patterns of inequality and uneven power, indefinitely deferring the quest for justice (Williams 2015). It is open to the potential of significant abuse by the powerful, to extend their power, and may entrench or deepen the inequalities and social divisions that drive conflict. Optimism about the potential of everyday peace to contribute to wider peace formation must therefore be tempered with realistic understanding of power, including the potential, if not likelihood, for everyday peace practices to be manipulated. Nonetheless, everyday peace does reflect agency, albeit limited by constraints such as these, and thus does offer a framework for potentially supporting and strengthening bottom-up peacebuilding agency. To that extent, it is a potentially useful framework to augment bottom-up, community-led development programming, and was adopted by this NGO for this programme.

The conflict context in Rakhine State

Rakhine State is the western-most state in Myanmar and, despite significant natural resources, one of the poorest (MIMU 2015). Some 78% of its population lives in poverty, with per capita income 25% less than the country average (Theis 2019). While ethnic Rakhine Buddhists are 1.7 times more likely to be living in poverty than the Myanmar average, the Rohingya Muslim minority are 2.4 times more likely (World Bank 2014). Adding to other drivers of poverty, the Bay of Bengal’s low-lying topography makes it vulnerable to frequent flooding and cyclones.

Along with poverty, intercommunal tension has festered for decades, if not centuries (Ware and Laoutides 2018). Violence erupted in mid-2012, resulting in the displacement of 140,000 people, mostly Rohingya (UNOCHA 2013). Violence intensified between 2015 and 2018, particularly after the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army conducted coordinated attacks on security posts in October 2016 and August 2017. These attacks provided the Myanmar military (the Tatmadaw) with the rationale for massive, disproportionate use of force – violence the United Nations (UN) labelled ‘ethnic cleansing … with genocidal intent’ (UNHRC 2018, 16). The population in 2015, before these attacks, was around two million Rakhine, 1.3 million Rohingya, and a scattering of other ethnicities (UoM 2015). The 2017–2018 ethnic cleansing resulted in at least 6700 Rohingya deaths and approximately 740,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh within a matter of months (Ware and Laoutides 2018). These refugees continue to languish in Bangladeshi camps, leaving only around 500,000 Rohingya in Myanmar, perhaps only 30% of their previous population (Ware and Laoutides 2018).

More recently, the Rakhine State conflict has shifted away from a Rohingya focus. Fighting between the Tatmadaw and the local Buddhist armed insurgent group, the Arakan Army, has intensified since 2017, resulting in almost 200,000 Rakhine Buddhist internally displaced persons, in addition to the large number of Rohingya displaced by earlier violence (AHCT 2021). Many Rakhine hold historical and contemporary grievances over perceived marginalisation and neglect; they feel their culture is being Burmanised, and their land plundered of resources. They also harbour deep existential fears about losing their territory and identity to the large Rohingya minority, a besieged feeling of being squeezed between Muslims on one side and the Burman-dominated rest of Myanmar on the other (Ware and Laoutides 2018). Further, they feel scapegoated by the Burmans, to deflect culpability for ethnic cleansing.

These conflicts are protracted and intractable, a complex tripartite situation in which the Tatmadaw holds power over both Rakhine and Rohingya populations (Ware and Laoutides 2018). The Rohingya are genuinely existentially threatened, and have suffered decades of extreme discrimination, privation, trauma and injustice, including severely restricted mobility and access to education, health, livelihood, safety, citizenship and human rights. But while the Rohingya are significantly poorer and more oppressed, both Rakhine and Rohingya populations live in deep poverty and under oppressive rule, contributing to ongoing fear, animosity, grievance and social division. After each episode of Rakhine–Rohingya violence, almost all intercommunal interaction between the communities was terminated, and segregation was enforced by military personnel. While a small number of hopeful outliers attempt to reforge connections, this segregation largely remains today – despite many Rohingya and Rakhine villages existing in close proximity to each other, sometimes separated only by a few metres of land or water.

In this context, where peacebuilding is not actively addressed by macro-national reform and groups are encouraged by both national and local elites to harbour grievances and continue separate lives, attempting to bring people together to rebuild relationships is potentially high risk. Such a volatile setting requires a gentle approach to avoid triggering new outbreaks of violence. Everyday peace appears to offer a framework to consider how pre-existing social practices already promote non-violent coexistence, and how these might be strengthened to facilitate tentative re-engagement.

Overview of the NGO programme

The local NGO’s programme works with Rakhine and Rohingya communities that are profoundly affected by both poverty and conflict narratives/fears, but have not been displaced. The programme uses participatory arts-based pedagogical methods reported elsewhere (Ware, Lauterjung, and Harmer McSolvin 2021), underpinned by asset-based community development principles and Freirian conscientisation to develop capacities for locally led development and peace activities. The NGO sees its role as supporting communities as they identify, advocate for and act towards fulfilling their own needs. Local ‘facilitators’ are trained and supported to lead village-based processes of identifying assets and needs, then planning and implementing locally led projects (supported by minimal external funding).

This is a localised programme working with rural villages in north-central Rakhine State, 50–75 kilometres from the state capital of Sittwe. The programme has worked with several cohorts over the past decade, in three-year cycles. This paper focuses on the current cohort, 2019–2022, which is working with 24 villages (12 village pairs). The data in this paper comes from an evaluation conducted at the end of year two (Kelly and Htwe 2021), a month or two before the February 2021 coup, meaning all findings reported here relate to the pre-coup period; but anecdotal reports suggest stronger, not weaker, outcomes post-coup, in the third year of the programme.

Government rules prohibiting free movement of Rohingya mean facilitators are necessarily ethnic Rakhine. Significant efforts are being invested to ensure Rohingya are as equal partners in the programme as possible, by conducting training within Rohingya villages wherever practical. The programme aims to also hire Rohingya facilitators when the situation allows, but that is currently not possible.

Facilitators attend quarterly training-of-trainers, on topics including community development, human rights, needs assessment, project planning, monitoring/evaluation and everyday peace. They then return to train their fellow villagers and neighbouring Rohingya villagers, organising participatory village committees from the outset with an emphasis on gender inclusion and marginalised people. Committees then conduct participatory needs/assets assessments, then prioritise, plan and implement development and peacebuilding projects. Special emphasis is placed on projects of mutual benefit to the two villages, in which villagers from the paired communities work together.

Using conscientisation to operationalise everyday peace

This paper focuses on the programme’s central use of conscientisation, and the incorporation of conscientisation into everyday peace practices as a methodology for contesting conflict narratives and strengthening bottom-up agency. The programme considers conscientisation a critical element of its participatory, community-led, empowerment-focused interventions, aiming to strengthen people’s agency, develop awareness and amplify capabilities. It has strong links and synergies with key development theories, including the rights-based approach, Sen’s work on development as the removal of unfreedoms, and Chambers’ identification of marginalisation as the root cause of poverty (Ware 2018).

Conscientisation was conceptualised by Freire (1972), to describe a process whereby subjugated people become critically aware of their oppression, its causes, and their ability to liberate themselves from their condition. With foundations in Marxian and Gramscian ideologies of hegemony, dehumanisation, oppression and the need for consciousness-raising (Ware 2018), Freire (1972, 33) argued oppression ‘absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings’ consciousness’ in a manner that conditions people to internalise that ‘oppressive reality’. According to Freire, this capitulation of individual power and self-determination results in people submitting to oppression, becoming objects of the oppressors’ will rather than autonomous subjects of their own agency. To overcome this, Freire advocates critical awareness-raising, or conscientisation, as the initial step towards social transformation, in which people reflect together upon their situation to become critically aware of their ‘oppression’ and scope of agency, and thus reclaim responsibility and self-determination, rejecting the internalised dehumanising narratives subjugating them. While Freire contends that conscientisation is a personal journey of self-discovery, he also argues that it necessarily involves dialogue with others, and this can be supported through skilled facilitation.

The programme is thus designed to strengthen the agency of communities and individuals. Over the last decade, it has sought to support village communities to critically analyse themselves and their situation, then reclaim their agency to address what they can, using existing assets and resources to engage in hyper-local, community-led development. This approach involves supporting people to imagine things differently and recognise their ability to effect change. As such, the programme does not pre-define the types of projects communities undertake; instead it acknowledges people as experts on their own situation, and trains them in methods and principles required to help them establish good community processes to assess, plan and implement projects of value to them, without imposing outsider views or ‘expertise’.

Given this conscientisation approach has been central to the programme for a decade, it offered a useful foundation to help people become aware of everyday peace social practices already being adopted in their villages, and prompt thinking about key issues, such as local conflict dynamics, identity, empathy, their reactions, and their capacity to contribute to peace formation. This begins during training-of-trainers workshops. From the beginning, awareness-raising of common everyday peace social practices was used to constantly encourage facilitators to recognise ways they were already acting towards peace. Much of the conscientisation work involves them reflecting on their everyday practices, and uses appreciative inquiry to help them consider how they could build on those pre-existing foundations. Later workshops followed on with participatory, arts-based consciousness-raising activities around human rights, mediation, inclusive identities and other co-designed topics.

Arts, props and participatory activities are used to prompt discussion in workshops. For example, an exploration of the everyday peace practice of ambiguity started by describing a scenario and then asking people to imagine themselves in the role of the Other. Adopting ideas from empathy training, male Rakhine community development facilitators were asked to imagine themselves as a Rohingya woman during the conflict, to express in the first person how a Rohingya woman might feel, and so on. This was used to enable them to look at the conflict from other perspectives. As well as prompting them to think about how things are viewed differently from other angles, such exercises helped them see similarities between themselves and the Other. Discussion on different perspectives and use of ambiguity were supported by optical illusion images, such as the well-known drawings that show an old woman from one angle and a young woman from another, and a number drawn on the ground which is a 6 from one angle and a 9 from the other. Lessons are complemented by individual and group reflective activities, such as writing stories, poems and songs, or drawing posters and cartoons.

Throughout workshops, people were encouraged to reflect on their context and think about how awareness of everyday peace social practices might help them plan and act with greater agency. An example would be an integration of discussion of things (topics, people, places, etc) to avoid, and including deliberate consideration of watching/reading plus shielding, into the planning of local development projects, to prevent or defuse potentially dangerous situations. They may use avoidance to purposefully steer people away from contentious topics while working on peacebuilding or development projects, ambiguity to mask some issues in order to engage constructively in others, civility during intercommunal engagement to avoid any reason for offence, solidarity to identify mutual benefit, and deliberate reciprocity to build mutual trust.

Findings and analysis: has the operationalisation strengthened the use of everyday peace social practices?

Data was collected in November–December 2020 (shortly before the February 2021 coup), at the end of year two of the three-year programme. Interviews were conducted with 15 local NGO staff/facilitators, and 12 focus groups (gender and ethnicity segregated) with 84 participants from villages, asking for examples or instances in which everyday peace social practices were observed or deliberately planned and adopted in the context of intercommunal engagement. All data was then themed against the eight everyday peace social practices in the typology outlined earlier. Codes are used to anonymise data: interview (i1, i2 etc) or focus group (fg1, fg2 etc), gender (M or F), and Rakhine or Rohingya (Ra or Ro). Local researchers collected the field data, guided by the authors, due both to COVID-19 restrictions and an intent to work towards localisation and strengthen local research/evaluation capability. All interviews were fully transcribed and translated.

Questions of negative outcomes or exploring nuanced analysis of power dynamics and broader peace–conflict dynamics were not pursued in detail, in part due to local researcher capability, and also in light of the stage of project implementation and conflict sensitivities. Obviously, this raises the possibility, if not probability, of confirmation bias in the data. However, the research question at this point is not about the effectiveness of the project in strengthening wider peace formation, but about whether this operationalisation approach has resulted in more, and more deliberate use of, everyday peace social practices in the local community as agentic acts towards stabilisation and peacebuilding.

Despite recent ethnic cleansing perpetrated against Rohingya in nearby townships, in which ethnic Rakhine nationalists were partly implicated, data suggests the paired villages participating in this programme have strengthened their use of everyday peace practices to stabilise their hyper-local situation and improve inter-village relations. This is not to suggest conflict narratives, tensions and behaviours do not also continue – they do. And villages beyond this programme may have very different experiences. However, the discussion below highlights examples of behaviour and interactions that align with the everyday peace typology, and appear to be instances of conscious, deliberate agency by local villagers seeking to strengthen everyday peace. These results suggest the approach of using conscientisation to help people become more aware of practical, everyday peace strategies already being adopted, which could be expanded, has added value.

To consolidate and disseminate the conscientisation processes, all facilitators report that they have held community awareness-raising meetings to reproduce their training to large groups of villagers, sometimes upward of 100 people, covering some of the everyday peace, human rights, social cohesion and conflict prevention materials they worked through in trainings. To bring these deliberations together, facilitators are currently collaborating to organise a multi-village peacebuilding forum, via which people from across the region can participate in mass consciousness-raising dialogue. This is their own initiative, beyond anything devised by the NGO.

Examples reported in the interviews and focus groups of how the eight everyday peace practices have been more deliberately adopted in the village pairs participating in the programme are presented below.

Avoidance

The NGO programme seeks to increase interaction between comparatively peaceful Rohingya and Rakhine neighbours; hence, avoidance was immediately contextualised as a way to protect safe engagement and plan what to avoid when organising activities. Some deeply divided societies practise avoidance by severing all ties with the Other and living entirely separated lives, and this certainly occurred in almost all of the village pairs at the height of recent ethnic cleansing violence. However, since this cohort’s commencement in 2019, avoidance has been mainly used to plan and support positive interactions between residents of village pairs.

For example, facilitators reported deliberate and conscious steps to avoid contentious subjects arising and act politely towards one another, when planning ways for people in paired villages to come together. According to facilitator interviews, if a villager started to complain about politics, they would be reminded to focus on other, more productive topics. In a specific act of avoidance relayed during a facilitator interview (i7-M-Ra), one village pair negotiated shared spaces and private spaces, so Rohingya know there are areas in the Rakhine village they can safely visit, and areas they cannot – and vice versa. They additionally agreed on curfews for visiting their neighbouring villages. These actions were clarified during the focus groups as an act of respect for both groups, mutually negotiated and agreed to provide each side with a feeling of welcome and safety.

A significant act of avoidance reported across many of the village pairs related to derogatory monikers. Interview and focus group data confirmed ethnic Rakhine commonly use the highly derogatory name kalar to refer to Rohingya. After discussing the hurtful and racist nature of this and other designations, Rakhine facilitator interviews indicated they have been changing their ingrained use of the word and calling the Rohingya Muslims instead. Almost all felt the word Rohingya carries too much political weight for them to adopt, but the use of Muslim was considered polite and neutral. However, some facilitators even avoided the use of Muslim, as less than ideal. As an act of rhetorical solidarity, one simply stated, ‘we are brothers’ (i15-M-Ra). Transition from ubiquitous derogatory language will not occur quickly, but spread of this avoidance language was noted in focus groups too, demonstrating it was being discussed and mimicked by some others in the community. During the interviews, Rakhine facilitators noted this very small action – avoiding one word – had significant impacts on how they were received by their Rohingya neighbours.

Watching/reading

With conflict between Rohingya and Rakhine simmering for decades, people have internalised a vigilance in watching/reading the Other. Watching/reading becomes second nature to those exposed to ongoing conflict. However, there are elements of watching/reading within the everyday peace typology that can be strengthened to work towards positive peace, which do not often occur as an automatic reflex to fear and distrust. While watching/reading centres on people observing Others closely, Ring (2006) notes the importance of also allowing Others to watch/read you. Facilitators noted ways they can promote peace by being open and transparent about their intentions and vulnerabilities, especially when trying to convince sceptics from the other community of their intentions. Throughout interviews, multiple facilitators noted they invite villagers to read their hearts by acting in good faith, smiling and being kind, and transparently discussing their intentions, budgets, motives and concerns.

Village residents in focus groups mentioned they are better able to understand the intentions of residents of their neighbouring villages now, through regular interaction. Participants in one Rakhine focus group sais of their Rohingya neighbours: ‘We see them every day now. We have no fear at all. We are also grateful to do trading and selling food with them. We are interdepending’ (fg3-F-Ra). The word ‘interdepending’ was translated into English by the local researcher directly from the comment, and they explained that rather than claiming the village pairs are interdependent, villagers used a term implying an evolving work in progress.

Ambiguity

Facilitators, and villagers via community awareness meetings, have widely discussed ambiguity as a technique often used for conflict avoidance. Activities have engaged groups in collective processes of conscientisation whereby they unpacked perspectives and practised empathy to imagine issues and situations from multiple viewpoints. These dialoguing sessions prepared villagers for more fruitful and peaceful interactions with residents of neighbouring villages. After community awareness-raising sessions, facilitators worked with residents to plan inter-village interactions through mutually beneficial development and peacebuilding projects.

With increasing social interaction, villagers reported in focus groups that they were aware of consciously practising ambiguity by dissembling and being ambiguous about their fears, grievances and concerns. Six recent inter-village fellowship dinners provided occasions to practise this. These dinners were organised by facilitators to bring neighbouring Rakhine and Rohingya villagers together, to spend leisure time sharing a meal, playing games and talking. During these dinners, local NGO staff and facilitators observed residents interacting amicably and overlooking differences previously considered offensive. For example, Rohingya villagers ignored Rakhine women’s lack of head covering and less modest clothing style, to enable constructive interaction (i15-M-Ra). Rohingya participants in another focus group noted that during their inter-village dinner, ‘We talked about so many issues and the relationship improved between us’ (fg7-M-Ro).

Shielding

In interviews, facilitators noted ways they have acted as shields to de-escalate their fellow villagers’ conflict tensions. They recounted occasions in which they stepped in and diverted conversations, sometimes explicitly asking speakers to avoid talking about topics or raising historical grievances. One facilitator (i2-F-Ra) mentioned that emotions started to rise during a poetry-writing session, with villagers discussing politics. She consciously addressed this, and steered them away from this focus, suggesting they write about social issues and peace.

A focus group of Rakhine villagers explained they have been able to work effectively with their Rohingya neighbours on problems, saying: ‘When we got into disagreement on certain issues, we negotiated very openly’ (fg8-M-Ra). There have also been examples of disagreements pacified by villagers calming the more impulsive and aggressive members of their own group, with more peaceful members of each side stepping in to broker an agreement. An example relayed during a facilitator interview (i7-M-Ra) involved a stolen cow; the Rakhine blamed a Rohingya neighbour and an argument began to escalate. Other villagers stepped into de-escalate rising emotions, and talk the more aggressive aggrieved parties on both sides out of violence. Reaching a resolution placated the more aggressive villagers, who were satisfied that the issue was closed and did not require their continuing anger or revenge.

Civility

Opportunities for practising civility have also increased dramatically. Two years ago, residents of paired villages hardly interacted with each other (eg ‘Before [the project], we rarely talked’, fg6-M-Ra). While increased interactions are partly due to the passage of time, participants reported that involvement in the programme provided them with a reason to come together and make intergroup connections for mutual benefit. Rohingya focus group participants mentioned that now, ‘people from Rakhine villages are nicer to us … we trust each other and have better understanding’ (fg7-M-Ro). Being ‘nice’ is indicative of increased civility, politeness and paying attention to etiquette.

Several focus groups reported discovering they can enhance the human and built environment of their own village by working together with their neighbouring village, through pooling funds and labour. In one example provided by a facilitator (i2-F-Ra), Rakhine and Rohingya villagers pooled their money and time to rebuild a market road between them, which both villages could utilise. During focus groups, villagers voiced a desire for increased engagement with neighbouring villagers, explaining that interaction cultivated emergent constructive dialogue and intercommunal trust. Other focus groups noted they are happy to work together with their neighbours, and claimed they are more united than before the programme began:

We have seen many changes, particularly in attitudes. We are happy to see that … the villagers are more aware of community development and willing to work together. And we enjoy working with Muslims, together. Before that, we did not want to work with them. The project had mutual benefit and we hope to work on more projects with Muslims together. (fg8-M-Ra)

They commented that now problems can be resolved by talking, instead of harbouring resentment. Participants in a Rohingya focus group commented, ‘If something happens between Rakhine and Muslims, we discuss through the village committees’ (fg2-M-Ro). They identified civility to be in their own self-interest, and believed non-violent processes could resolve conflict. Politeness and tolerance could see tasks completed, allowing each village to get what they wanted: ‘Due to our daily communication, working together, we feel attached each other. Because of them [the Rohingya neighbours], we can do more work in our village’ (fg5-F-Ra).

Both Rohingya and Rakhine focus groups highlighted that practising politeness and tolerance helped grow the incomes of both sides. The ability to interact with polite tolerance has provided village pairs with the stability to increase trading activities. Participants noted: ‘We get more income and it is very easy to do trading’ (fg1-M-Ra). Participants from another village focus group similarly responded: ‘We have got more income due to a better relationship between us’ (fg6-M-Ra). Villagers in all 12 focus groups mentioned they have increased hiring each other for labour, as well as trade and commerce in shared market spaces. Some have even established an inter-village football league.

While blame deferral is downplayed in training-of-trainers workshops, facilitators noted that shifting blame to a third party has helped their villages to act with civility towards one another. Facilitators completed a participatory survey prior to their interviews, and one question invited them to assess who they blamed for the conflict, and how much. Collectively, the 12 facilitators placed 99% of blame for the intercommunal tensions on the Burmese Tatmadaw (military). The fact that this does not fully reflect documented intercommunal hate speech and violence perpetrated across the north of the state over the past decade only highlights that this is an everyday peace social practice rather than objective reality. Further, all of the Rakhine and Rohingya focus groups similarly expressed their common oppression by the Tatmadaw, with one group recollecting a recent occasion when residents of the village pair were working together on a community project until they were fired upon by Tatmadaw forces and had to run back to their respective villages. Experiences such as these have helped unite Rakhine and Rohingya, with both suffering oppression by a third party, albeit to varying degrees. During many interviews, local staff and facilitators commented the Tatmadaw want the Rakhine and Rohingya to fight and hate each other. One stated ‘We do not want to be victims of political games anymore’ (i13-M-Ra). It would appear that working together has perhaps begun to be a form of resistance, a way of reclaiming agency against an oppressive regime.

Nonetheless, an ongoing intractable conflict between Rakhine and Rohingya remains, with deep tensions. Power imbalances between Rakhine and Rohingya have yet to be challenged. None of the interviews or focus groups even noted the inequalities, such as Rohingya being hired by Rakhine as day labourers, but not vice versa. Issues such as Rohingya alienation from their land, and their vulnerability due to lack of citizenship or rights to free movement, have not yet even been broached. It is hoped that everyday peace may offer a base from which negotiation about such inequalities may potentially emerge, but there is no indication that such larger justice issues are being broached at the inter-village level yet.

Reciprocity

There was little evidence of reciprocity throughout the first year of the NGO programme, with residents of paired villages largely keeping to themselves, apart from limited engagement around livelihoods or working together on a small number of mutually beneficial projects. The second year has seen some transactional interactions develop into deeper connections, with indications of greater neighbourly exchange and mutual ongoing indebtedness.

During the initial year of the programme, paired villages only worked together on community-led development projects that affected members of both communities, such as bridges or roads between villages for use by both Rakhine and Rohingya. In the second year, several projects that benefitted only one of the villages engaged the support, both financial and in kind, of the other village – notably, all Rakhine helping Rohingya. This included infrastructure projects, such as mending roads within villages, but also other projects such as a large education project that is discussed in more detail in the section on solidarity.

One mutually beneficial project planned by a village pair involved construction of a footbridge over an irrigation canal separating the two communities. Residents from both villages were involved in the planning, but the Rohingya focus group confirmed that when it came to construction, they grew suspicious and fearful of exploitation and so refused to help unless the Rakhine paid them for their labour. The Rohingya left after a tense stand-off, but Rakhine villagers stayed and built the bridge on their own. This gesture of goodwill was instrumental in building trust, and the Rohingya report they have agreed to take part in subsequent projects. Rakhine villagers making a first effort towards reciprocity enabled a move towards a culture of reciprocity with their neighbours.

Participants in another Rakhine focus group explained how the relationship with their Rohingya neighbours has changed over the past two years:

We got agreement to work … with funding from both villages at first [on mutually beneficial projects]. The next time, we contributed to the Muslim village to implement their project activities. We have now got better relationship between two villages. Before that, we rarely talked and did not allow the Muslims to go in the Rakhine village. Now they are allowed to come and go in the Rakhine village. (fg6-M-Ra)

Participants in another Rohingya focus group (not from the paired village linked to the above quote) expressed happiness that when ‘we could not buy some equipment for the road repairs, the Rakhine village committee bought it for us’ (fg2-M-Ro).

As well as offering each other support on community-led projects, focus group participants highlighted several instances of Rakhine and Rohingya inviting one another to join traditional festivals, cultural events and sports activities. For example, one Rakhine village ran a song competition and invited their Rohingya neighbours, while some Rohingya villages invited their Rakhine neighbours to play chinlone together (a traditional game using a rattan ball).

The three-year NGO programme was interrupted by significant crises, including continued violence been the Tatmadaw and local armed insurgents (2019–present), as well as the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–present). Both discouraged the cross-community collaboration necessary for harmony-building and project work between villages. While these crises were unsettling and disruptive, they also offered unexpected peacebuilding opportunities.

According to interviews, during the COVID-19 pandemic paired villages have supported one another by sharing personal protective equipment, food, sanitisation supplies and medicine. When the Tatmadaw destroyed two Rohingya villages and a Rakhine village, residents from non-destroyed villages supported their fleeing neighbours. Participants of a Rakhine focus group recalled: ‘We donated rice, money, drinking water and clothes for the [Rohingya] refugees’ (fg6-M-Ra). Participants of Rohingya focus groups recounted that when their villages were destroyed, their Rakhine neighbours set up a large meal and sleeping area in a Rakhine community building, cooked for them and provided non-perishable food, clothing, medicine and other items. One of the local staff members (i13-M-Ra) reported the support was reciprocated when the Rakhine village was subsequently destroyed by the Tatmadaw. Residents scattered to surrounding villages to stay with friends and family; meanwhile, their Rohingya neighbours cared for their animals until the owners were able to return. One staff member observed that paired villages are engendering a culture where ‘Muslims take care of Rakhine and Rakhine take care of Muslims’ (i13-M-Ra).

Solidarity

The everyday peace practices of reciprocity, outlined above, have strong links to solidarity. Part of the everyday peace training focuses on developing empathy for the Other. All of the Rakhine focus groups noted increased empathy towards members of their paired Rohingya village: ‘We feel very sorry for them. They could not move freely before. Just like they are in prison’ (fg8-M-Ra). ‘They live under the poverty line. They work so hard and some of their children have to work in order to survive’ (fg6-M-Ra). ‘We feel sorry for them. We do not hate them’ (fg11-F-Ra). Participants in one group explained that increased interactions with their Rohingya neighbours had changed their opinion: ‘Since we interact daily, we can see how much they suffer. And we are happy to see that they are doing better in terms of daily income and job opportunities. We want them to get better opportunities and life’ (fg1-M-Ra).

These changing perspectives are reflected in Rohingya focus group participants’ shifting attitudes towards the Rakhine: ‘We defended ourselves. We felt angry and fearful during and after the violence. However, we feel more confident to talk to [the Rakhine now]’ (fg9-F-Ro). ‘We were afraid of the Rakhine during the violence. However, we do not fear them anymore. We feel no difference between Rakhine and Rohingya. We can work together’ (fg2-M-Ro). ‘We feel that Rakhine are very nice. We have no issues with them. We believe that we will get better year by year’ (fg7-M-Ro). Participants of a different Rohingya focus group took this a step further, demonstrating compassion towards their Rakhine neighbours’ situation:

They [the Rakhine] also suffered a lot due to fighting between the Arakan Army and the Tatmadaw. We feel sorry for them. We want them to be doing great so we can also be okay. We rely on each other. We are like brothers. We want more friendship. (fg10-M-Ro)

Coming just a couple of years after massive ethnic cleansing violence, these are profound statements of change.

The education project mentioned in the previous section offers a good example of the programme creating opportunities for solidarity as an everyday peace practice. One village pair had worked together on several infrastructure projects, and started to develop a rapport, before turning to address the Rohingyas’ lack of access to education. In an apparent effort to keep the peace via segregation, the Myanmar government banned Rohingya children from attending basic (primary) schools in Rakhine villages. As many Rohingya villages do not have their own schools, this means a significant proportion of Rohingya children have been unable to access education. One village pair decided education access was a vital intercommunal project. They determined they would allow Rohingya children to attend school in the Rakhine village, and leaders of both villages advocated to the education administrator to allow this. Meanwhile, while they await a response, Rakhine teachers are teaching Rohingya children in informal open-air classes. Many Rohingya children from neighbouring villages have joined these classes. Additionally, this village pair initiated a project to raise funds for Rohingya children to attend high school in the township.

These acts lay a foundation that is likely to enhance solidarity, even warmth, between these neighbouring villages. Such community-led compassion and generosity highlight how micro-solidarities might accumulate towards more transformational outcomes.

Compromise

Constructive interactions between parties always involve some element of compromise. Given the injustices are not equal, compromise is often unequal and not always positive. However, for the individual, disremembering injustices and grievances for a time allows them to enjoy a marginally better quality of life and peaceful coexistence in the present. There is hope of deeper change emerging, as increased exposure to the Other allows feelings of resentment to be replaced with nascent feelings of solidarity. This was noted by both Rakhine and Rohingya focus group participants from a paired village, where the Rakhine participants said: ‘The villagers from both communities worked on a project together and they have got better relationship, trust and become more friendly each other’ (fg3-F-Ra). Rohingya neighbours similarly commented: ‘we asked the Rakhine to work on a bridge together. Since then, we have got better relationship’ (fg4-F-Ro).

Most actions of compromise are subtle and non-observable internal decisions by individuals. One overt example of renunciation of rights as a deliberate act to strengthen peace was displayed during the inter-village argument over a stolen Rakhine cow reported above (i1-M-Ra). The Rakhine blamed a Rohingya neighbour, and the argument began to escalate. Villagers stepped in to de-escalate the rising emotions, in an act of shielding. As passions eased, reflecting on the embryonic peace the village pair had been nurturing, the Rakhine chose to retract their complaint and let the matter go, suffering a loss for the sake of peace. It is particularly significant that the more powerful group gave most in this compromise, an outcome that is not always common. Renunciation in this situation gave disputants permission to forget the issue and move on, rather than allowing one negative event to derail their fragile intercommunal relationship – even though that involved giving up a legitimate right.

Conclusions and implications for practice

This paper has explored a case study operationalising an everyday peace framework to strengthen peace formation. The examples cited, while not incontrovertibly causal, offer evidence that even in a case as extreme as post-ethnic cleansing, supporting everyday peace social practices can contribute to a broader peace, as multiple micro-actions reinforce and micro-solidarities begin pooling. It suggests conscientisation, stepping ordinary people through a collaborative dialogic process of unpacking their situation, engaging empathy for the Other, and formulating their own solutions for the problems specific to their contexts, appears to open a door for those with limited power to undertake agentic action towards peaceful outcomes.

Admittedly, the examples cited here are the best, positive cases reported, and paired villages were selected for their comparatively strong intercommunal relations and non-violent history. A more nuanced evaluation would undoubtedly find evidence of negative events and abuses of power still occurring in the communities. However, this analysis set out to examine whether operationalisation of this framework could promote positive results. We contend that such positive instances and engagements are under-studied in conflict settings, and can be instrumental. The data presented here, while demonstrating the highlights of intercommunal engagement over two years, suggests that everyday peace can be operationalised meaningfully, and that conscientisation to everyday peace social practices can strengthen peace formation.

Our previous research (Ware and Ware 2021) has highlighted the fact that conflict narratives are predominantly perpetrated by elite actors and cultural forces, and that a confidence that vulnerable people will put in immense work to prevent a flare of violence often means they can deliberately destabilise a situation to further their power (‘playing with peace’, as Ring (2006) put it). Likewise, as noted above, compromise, acceptance and engagement are often powered acts based more on domination and coercion than free agency. Everyday peace may thus conceal patterns of inequality and uneven power, and is open to the potential for significant abuse by the more powerful. While beyond this paper’s scope, further detailed anthropological research exploring the role of local elites and cultural forces would greatly add to our understanding – for example, exploring the role of religion/religious leaders, local politics and state ideology in the local conflict–peace dynamics, and whether this attempt to strengthen everyday peace formation has impacted these forces at the local level. The literature argues that the everyday is a site of active resistance to narratives and cultural forces, and clearly, religious doctrine and leaders, for example, play significant roles in conflict/peace dynamics. Analysis would need to account for the way those influences are felt and reacted to by the ordinary local village actors targeted by this intervention. We do note, however, that even local village religious leaders or village headmen are part of a local elite, raising additional questions in the context of the everyday.

A key advantage of this approach is that it builds on the pre-existing social practices of a majority of people, and through consciousness-raising, allows ordinary people to potentially act for peace with greater agency via everyday activities. It recognises their role as potential change agents. By avoiding certain topics and behaviours, ignoring slights, deliberately acting civilly and working in solidarity, the 12 village pairs have been able to complete over 170 mutually beneficial, community-led projects in the past two years (Kelly and Htwe 2021). The tangible achievements have provided opportunities to interact and engage across the conflict divide, resulting in both positive development and social outcomes. Interactions provide space to practise and hone everyday social practice skills that strengthen their relationships, and help move away from rigid conflict identities that define and divide.

Engaging in processes of consciousness-raising has encouraged villagers to talk together, be open-minded about peace and enhance empathy. Where previously they avoided such conversations, viewing the issues as insurmountable or overwhelming, the process of conscientisation coupled with the practical actions identified in the everyday peace typology appears to have offered ordinary people a pathway to follow. Local staff noticed significant changes in the facilitators and villagers, from cautious hesitation and reluctance to engage at the beginning of the programme, to willingness to work together, to new perspectives and tentative hopes for a better future. This is not to suggest a perfect or just relationship yet exists; years of conflict, tension and injustice cannot be healed within the confines of a short-term programme. However, operationalisation of this everyday peace framework through consciousness-raising appears to have provided incremental, but tangible, practical benefit.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by GraceWorks Myanmar Inc, under a collaborative research agreement.

Notes on contributors

Anthony Ware

Anthony Ware is Associate Professor of international and community development in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. His research focuses on humanitarian/international development approaches in conflict-affected situations, with a particular interest in conflict sensitivity, doing no harm, everyday peace, peacebuilding, and countering violent/hateful extremism via community-led programming. More broadly, his research revolves around the impact of conflict and socio-political factors on participatory development. He has published more than four dozen academic papers/chapters, and four books.

Vicki-Ann Ware

Vicki-Ann Ware is Senior Lecturer in international and community development in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University, and an ethnomusicologist. Her research focuses on community development in conflict-affected contexts, with a particular interest in using arts-based approaches to train community development practitioners in ways to strengthen the formation of everyday peace. Her current research explores arts as a pedagogical tool in community development and peacebuilding, primarily in Myanmar, and mechanisms by which arts can contribute to significant grassroots social change.

Leanne M. Kelly

Leanne M. Kelly is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University, with nearly 20 years’ experience working for community development and social service non-profits. As well as working directly with community members affected by intercommunal conflict, she has evaluated the impact of peacebuilding approaches on attitudes, behaviours and social harmony. She is the external evaluator for the programme discussed in this chapter. She has published 25 academic papers and one book.