After decades of civil war and repression by the military regime, Myanmar is still the most conflict-ridden state in Southeast Asia. Under the former Thein Sein government a peace process was initiated to bring the ethnic armed groups together with the military and the government to the negotiating table. The de facto head of state of the current National League for Democracy government, Aung San Suu Kyi, took the legacy of the so-called "Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement", which is the outcome of dozens of negotiation rounds, to a new level. With the "Panglong Conference of the 21st Century" she aimed to further the peace process by reviving the pre-independent Panglong conferences and the following agreement between her father Aung San and several ethnic leaders, which has never been realized. The current conflict landscape is characterized by deep mistrust between the different parties, new ethnic coalitions have been formed to counter the peace strategy of the government and China is increasingly engaging as facilitator in the peace negotiations.

We would like to invite you to a Talk and Discussion with Dr. N. Ganesan, Professor of Southeast Asian politics at the Hiroshima Peace Institute in Japan, about the current developments in the peace process in Myanmar and the challenges ahead.

Moderation by:

Christina Grein, Coordinator of the Burma-Initiative, Stiftung Asienhaus

Dr. Colin Dürkop, former director Regional Programme Political Dialogue Asia, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung