Health as a bridge to peace in Myanmar’s Kayin State: ‘working encounters’ for community development

Abstract

This article explores ‘health as a bridge to peace’ in Myanmar’s Kayin State. It focuses on an Auxiliary Midwife training programme, which has created partnerships between actors historically divided by decades-long conflict. Drawing on ethnographic research, the article highlights the agency of community-level service providers, who are often overlooked in conventional approaches to peacebuilding. It demonstrates that community health workers are challenging top-down liberal approaches to peacebuilding and advancing an alternative approach to development and peace in their areas – one that emphasises systemic change and recognition of non-state governance systems. The shared lexicon and standardised practices of healthcare create ‘working encounters’ – encounters that ‘work’, because they enable actors historically divided by conflict to carve out an ‘apolitical’ space in an otherwise highly politicised context, while still allowing for different perspectives and agendas. These ‘working encounters’ in turn facilitate the development of understanding, trust and collaboration across conflict divides. Yet community-level actors face structural limitations, which are often underestimated by proponents of ‘health as a bridge to peace’. Nevertheless, this case study highlights significant contributions that community-level ‘working encounters’ can make to wider peace processes, as well as the need for hybrid and emancipatory practices of peace formation.