Myanmar’s civil war is one of the clearest tests of the international community’s promise to protect civilians. Two decades on from the creation of the United Nations’ “Responsibility to Protect,” that promise has been quietly abandoned.
Myanmar has spent most of its independent life in conflict. Since its inception in 1948, it has struggled to build a political order that can hold together its highly diverse ethno-politico-religious communities. At its core is an unequal relationship between a Bamar-dominated central state and the ethnic border regions.
