Peacebuilding in Asia

Last month, Dili played host to visiting government officials from more than 20 countries, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Timor-Leste’s vote for independence on August 30, 1999. As the excitement and gravitas of the nationwide festivities taper off, and the dry-season dust resettles o… Read more

The Asia Foundation hosted the 8th annual author workshop of the Asian Approaches to Development Cooperation (AADC) dialogue series. Organized jointly with the Korea Development Institute, the AADC brings together development experts and government officials to address how Asian countries’ engagement in development and South-South cooperation is ch… Read more

The Nepal Peace Monitor: Annual Review 2017 report prepared by the Collective Campaign for Peace, presents data collected by the Nepal Peace Monitoring Project and is an effort to contribute to human rights and peace in Nepal by monitoring conflict and the nature of those occurrences. It provides a comprehensive overview of incidents documented thr… Read more

Community-based mediation is a proven alternative or complementary mechanism for resolving conflict and ensuring equal access to justice in countries that face a combination of capacity, time and cost, and social and cultural constraints that limit public access to formal legal services. In Asia, mediated dispute resolution has facilitated access t… Read more

This week, Alistair Burt, the Minister of State for the Middle East at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, UK, announced Smart Peace, a new four-year program which will deliver innovative conflict resolution programming. The Smart Peace program combines the expertise of consortium members to address the challenges of building sustainable peace i… Read more

The Asia Foundation is leading a series of programs to encourage stronger relations between Thailand and the United States. Thailand is America’s oldest friend and ally in Asia, a connection dating to the presidency of James Monroe. However, bilateral relations have been under strain in recent years with the growing influence of China and the chall… Read more

The Manila Bulletin reports on a Peace Caravan in Marawi in the Southern Philippines. Members of The Asia Foundation volunteered in the “Duyon Ramahdan, Alang sa Kalilnaw” in Marawi City. The 10-day event, which was held from June 6th to the 15th, was organized by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP). The Asia Foundat… Read more

Despite rapid economic growth, conflict has persisted in many parts of Asia. Peacebuilding efforts have often focused on the role that Western nations or multilateral bodies can play in supporting statebuilding to build peace. South-South cooperation emphasizes supporting peacebuilding efforts in partner countries by drawing on a country’s own relevant experience.

The Asia Foundation is a longstanding partner working in Mindanao in support of peace. The Foundation cooperates with all stakeholders in search of peace, including the Philippine government, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Moro National Liberation Front, and a range of civil society partners across Mindanao. The Foundation supports national… Read more

Three and a half years after the withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping mission from Timor-Leste, The Asia Foundation’s new survey on community police perceptions finds that Timorese people are optimistic about the security situation in their country, feelings of insecurity are at their lowest levels in a decade, and there is greater trust in the police… Read more

Late last month, a group of young peace advocates sponsored “Piece of Peace,” or POP, an art contest at a public elementary school in the town of Patikul in Sulu, Southern Philippines. The event attracted young artists from the area who showcased their talents…

The new set of post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals includes for the first time a target that specifically sets out to promote peaceful and inclusive societies, marking an increase in awareness that peace and security is critical for sustainable development.

On August 13, the Philippine polling organization Social Weather Stations (SWS) observed its 30th anniversary with the publication of Filipino Public Opinion on the Bangsamoro Basic Law and the Mamasapano Incident. The report is based on the results of nationwide surveys in March and June, and a February survey in Mindanao, supported by The Asia Foundation.

It was an admirable effort. On March 7, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), understaffed with just four commissioners left after the retirement of Chairman Sixto Brillantes, held a symbolic special satellite voter registration of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) members and their families….

January 22 marks the deadline for a new constitution in Nepal, as committed to by all political parties participating in the 2013 Constituent Assembly (CA) elections. But on Tuesday of this week, thousands of police were deployed and schools and shops were shut down in the capital…

Conflict-affected areas of Mindanao in the southern Philippines form a complex, unpredictable, and highly dynamic environment that makes development programming very challenging against a backdrop of general urgency. Over the last 15 years, The Asia Foundation has been engaged in Mindanao…

Development assistance is founded on countless theories about how foreign taxpayers’ money can be harnessed to instigate and catalyze economic and social development and provide humanitarian benefits abroad. Basic arguments for how positive change can be achieved…

Research has transformed medicine, agriculture, and sanitation, and has helped lift many millions out of poverty. Most of the extremely poor people in the world now live in states suffering from conflict. Scholars have studied wars for millennia, but are usually concentrated on how to win them.

There is a difficult tension in the evidence-seeking agenda: on the one hand, donors seek short-term, project-related outcomes to support claims about their impact on a grand scale in a society; on the other hand, society-level impact does not seem measurable…

In Asia editor Alma Freeman sat down last month with The Asia Foundation’s new trustee, Donald Steinberg, president and CEO of World Learning, and former deputy administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, White House Deputy Press Secretary, and U.S. ambassador to Angola.

As we prepare for the long-awaited March 27 signing in Manila between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, one of the striking things of the peace process…

As the focus of building peace in Mindanao shifts from negotiating details to the actual implementation of agreements between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), The Asia Foundation has been asked by both parties to join the five-person Third Party Monitoring Team (TPMT).

The Asia Foundation’s new study, “The Contested Corners of Asia,” highlights the growing importance of conflicts that occur within rather than between countries. In recent years, subnational conflicts between national governments and local rebel groups…

Aceh – Indonesia’s western-most province which endured three decades of a secessionist civil war that left at least 15,000 dead – is frequently cited as the best recent example in Asia of a successful peace process. However, eight years after the Helsinki accord brought an end to the conflict, new forms of localized violence are now emerging.

The Asia Foundation just launched a major new study on development and subnational conflict in Asia. “The Contested Corners of Asia” argues that subnational conflict is the most widespread, deadly, and enduring form of conflict in Asia, and that increasing development and expanding state capacity do not make these conflicts any easier to resolve. A product of a three-year research effort, the study involved nearly 100 researchers, leading subnational conflict experts…

When we hear about the current slow pace of negotiations between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, we can lose sight of the many concrete achievements made over the years. As peacemakers on both sides of the negotiating table try to learn lessons from past peace efforts…

In a study I wrote a number of years ago, I quoted a peace activist in Mindanao lamenting the lack of success in ending the war between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). He was speaking in the wake of President Estrada’s 2000 “all-out war” offensive that overran fixed positions of the MILF.

Mindanao dominates the headlines in the Philippines this week for several reasons. There is the horrific aftermath of Typhoon Pablo (known internationally as Bopha), which slammed into an area of the island that typically does not get hit by storms. On a lighter note, but one that also riveted the nation, hometown boxer Manny Pacquiao (from General Santos City in Mindanao) was knocked out this past weekend in a surprise, convincing defeat – leading to speculation about whether his sterling career is on the wane.

On October 19, The Asia Foundation held the Manila launch of the book, Dynamics of Gender and Conflict in Mindanao, written by conflict experts Rufa Guiam and Leslie Dwyer.

It has been an exciting and emotional 10 days for the peace process between the Philippine government and the country’s largest rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which looks to end 40 years of conflict that has left a reported 150,000 dead and devastated the economy.

A fortnight ago I blogged about the energy for peace I found at two very different events in Mindanao. We might now ask: what is the origin of that energy, and of the general surge toward a peace agreement? At first glance, this may seem to have an obvious answer, since it is clear from citizen surveys…

For the first time in my life, I am visiting London. Everybody tells me how unusual is the glorious weather we’re enjoying, and that my infatuation with the city might not be as strong if the weather were more normal – gloomy and wet – but I plan to take these first impressions as fixed.

In March 2012, a few weeks before Thai New Year which is celebrated every April, a series of explosions rocked a district of Thailand’s Songkla province popular with tourists, and a business district in Yala province.

Nearly 1,500 participants from local communities, government agencies, and the armed forces gathered in late May 2012 for a Peace Festival in Thailand’s conflict-affected Deep South. The Peace Festival is the culmination…

Burma (also known as Myanmar) may be on the verge of a dramatic expansion of international assistance. After last month’s parliamentary by-elections, there is likely to be more support for easing sanctions and increasing foreign assistance to the country to support the changes underway.

North Korea’s failed rocket launch accomplished the rarest of feats. The regime managed to simultaneously outrage the world and embarrass itself at the same time. Unfortunately, this increases the likelihood that Pyongyang will undertake a nuclear test…

With presidential elections set for March 17, followed by parliamentary elections in June, Timor-Leste is now in full political campaign mode. Some prominent figures in the country will compete for the post in Saturday’s presidential election, including incumbent president Jose Ramos Horta; the just-resigned commander of the armed forces, Taur Matan Ruak; Vice Prime Minister Jose Luis Guterres; the sitting president of the National Parliament, Fernando Lasama; and Lu Olo, the president of the main opposition party FRETLIN.

Peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Kuala Lumpur last week featured chocolates on Valentine’s Day. It was a light moment in talks characterized by the Malaysian facilitator as “sincere but tough.” As the next scheduled meeting in March approaches…

Since Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war ended in 2009, we’re now witnessing the beginning of reconstruction in the country’s battered North and East. The government is rapidly investing in roads, rail, ports, and telecommunications that help connect marginalized communities with the vibrant, growing capital of Colombo.

Last week, Nepal’s political parties reached agreement on the future of 19,602 Maoist ex-combatants, breaking years of political log jam. In Asia spoke with Asia Foundation Nepal country representative, George Varughese…

Over the past 90 days, the peace process between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has been through the best of times and the worst of times. At the beginning of August, President Noynoy Aquino met…

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s controversial off-the-cuff remarks made earlier this month on the influence of conservative Islamic groups on the Bangladesh polity, led the Indian government to announce immediately – quite contrary to diplomatic practice – his much-awaited visit to Dhaka on September 6-7.

Thailand’s political landscape throughout much of the 20th century was populated by numerous regional or personality-based parties, and characterized by weak coalition governments. Alliances and coalitions were made and broken easily, as parties sought the best deal for their constituents and members.

Contrary to the predictions made by the plethora of political pundits watching Thailand’s elections that the Democrats would have difficulty holding their five current seats in Thailand’s Deep South, the Democrats instead ran away with nine out of 11 constituent seats.

At a polling station in Chiang Mai province, election officials were busy counting votes just moments after the polls closed for Thailand’s July 3 general election. As counting continued, each ballot was placed aside in a pile, visible to the large crowd observing.

Having served as a short-term international observer for the general election in Thailand earlier this month on July 3, I unfortunately became somewhat of an expert in the dark arts of vote buying. As one of 60 observers from the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) deployed around the country…

On May 28, 2011, Nepal’s Constituent Assembly (CA) will end its tenure, for the second time, without having completed even a first draft of the constitution. In the lead-up to the deadline, a strike by ethnic and indigenous groups nearly shut down the nation’s capital Kathmandu late last month…

Over the last months, the world has watched as uprisings and revolutions have spread across the streets and squares of the Arab world. In Egypt, entire families – mothers, wives, daughters, grandmothers, showed remarkable courage in standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their brothers, sons, and fathers…

Earlier this month, the World Bank released its 2011 World Bank Development Report, “Conflict, Security and Development.” This highly ambitious report intends to challenge conventional wisdom and propose a new strategy for the international community to help countries emerge from war, long-running violent conflict, entrenched criminality, and fragility. In my view, the report has accomplished this goal, and in so doing, may change the way we work with fragile states and conflict-affected regions.

Since Thailand’s color politics began pitting the People’s Alliance for Democracy’s (PAD) “Yellow-Shirt” movement against the National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship’s (UDD) “Red-Shirt” movement, political watchers have insisted that the Thai people are bitterly divided in their loyalties to rival political factions. The view holds that an old-guard elite preference for guided democracy has collided with a populist call from marginalized farmers and wage earners to return Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to power.

In 1947, Winston Churchill said “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others that have been tried.” When Churchill made this remark, Thailand was in the throes of developing a strong dictatorial state headed by the military. But after six decades of impressive economic advancement and social mobility…

After nearly eight months without leadership, Nepal’s parliament has elected Jhala Nath Khanal prime minister. In Asia interviewed Asia Foundation Deputy Country Representative in Kathmandu Sagar Prasai about what this news means for the peace process and what lies ahead. Read the interview.

A general nervousness around the exit last week of the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), which monitored Nepal’s struggling peace process since 2007, was evident in political commentaries as early as last November. Perhaps because political pundits expect more from politicians than most of us do, most commentators were hoping that Nepal’s political parties would defy their history of brinkmanship…

Often, when the prospect of peace is moving forward at the national level, citizens continue to experience the impacts of conflict, particularly at the local level. This is very much the case in Nepal today – emerging from nearly a decade-long open civil war – as the Constituent Assembly struggles toward a peace process at the national level. These… Read more

Around midnight on May 28, 2010, Nepali lawmakers took a stunning last-minute emergency action that served to keep hopes for a democratic constitutional republic and a stable nation alive in Nepal: by an overwhelming majority the Eighth Amendment Bill to the interim constitution to extend the Constituent Assembly’s tenure by one year was passed. Of… Read more

On May 28, 2010, three major political parties of Nepal, including the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), signed a three-point agreement pushing the deadline for promulgating a new constitution to May 28, 2011. Without that amendment, the Assembly’s constitutional tenure would have ended without having produced even a first draft of the new constit… Read more

On election day in the Philippines, The Commission on Elections declared a poll failure in several towns in Lanao del Sur, among them the municipality of Bayang, where a peace covenant signing among local candidates took place in February 2010 to pledge support for the conduct of honest and peaceful elections in the area. While the peace convention… Read more

Among the most prominent rido (clan conflict) reconciliations facilitated by The Asia Foundation’s partners in the Philippines is the celebrated resolution to the feud between the Imam and the Macapeges clans. In the small municipality of Matanog in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the former mayor (Macapeges) and his political riva… Read more

On Nov. 23, 2009, the incident now widely known as the “Maguindanao Massacre,” left 57 unarmed civilians dead. The enormous media attention to this gruesome incident and the resulting local and international public outrage ensured swift action from authorities to arrest and put to trial the suspects in the killing. Amid fears of a looming rido (cla… Read more

The May 2010 national and local elections will claim many firsts: the first nationwide automated elections in the Philippines and in Asia, and also the most expensive election in the country’s electoral history. Strange bedfellows share the same stage in campaign sorties (Leftist leaders who were detained by former President Marcos share the same S… Read more

Below is an excerpt from Mr. Torres’ chapter “Letting A Thousand Flowers Bloom: Clan Conflicts and their Management” in the newly-published Challenges to Human Security in Complex Situations: The Case of Conflict in the Southern Philippines. Life with rido is being a prisoner in your house. A person without rido can go anywhere. A person with rido… Read more

Special to In Asia A constable, his uniform freshly pressed, sits elbow to elbow with more than a dozen local residents in a loud, airless office in Pussellawa, a high-altitude hamlet nestled among the tea plantations of central Sri Lanka’s diverse Kandy district. “We’re limited,” he says. “The area we have to cover is big. We don’t have enough veh… Read more

A study by The Asia Foundation’s Philippines Representative Steven Rood, published by the East-West Center