Search results

Discussion opens with a description of the Millennium Challenge Accounts, an incentive-based foreign aid program geared toward encouraging good governance among aid-receiving governments. While potentially representing an advance over current practice, it is argued that aid is provided to only the best-governed states while all others are ignored. However, the best-governed states enjoy a higher state capacity & are more likely to already effectively use aid whereas the "loser" states are the ones most in need of aid. Thus, the MCA program will not help ameliorate state collapse, safeguard rights, or raise the standard of living for the worst states. 1 Table. J. Zendejas

Myanmar has suffered the world's longest civil war, with continuous combat since shortly before the country's independence from the UK in 1948. A new National Ceasefire Agreement has raised hopes that peace may finally be in sight. However, optimism should be tempered by a recognition the peace process has not built much trust, reduced the number of non-state armed groups in the country, their total size, or significantly improved their human rights behavior. This is demonstrated through an analysis of original data on the major non-state armed groups active in Myanmar between 1985 and 2017. Peace will require hard political work leading to disarmament, restraining the military, and reassuring the country's ethnic minority groups that their rights and interests will be respected even without the threat of insurgent violence.

Burma's recent election was clearly not free and fair. However, it can also be seen as improving a uniquely unrepresentative government, creating greater pluralism, and institutionalizing differences within the ruling junta. Even the rigged election may have created opportunities for further opening in the future.