EU to rebrand peace funds as conflict funds

In an exclusive interview with Burma Tha Din, the EU Ambassador to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Roland Cobia, revealed that the EU will rebrand its funding for the peace process as ‘conflict funding’ in light of the increase in conflict in Myanmar.

“It just looks bad if you provide tens of millions of dollars for peace and you end up with more conflict," said Cobia. “We considered momentarily whether we might be doing something wrong in the way we have gone about our peace process related funding, but that’s basically inconceivable. The chances of any of our projects in Myanmar ever receiving a genuine evaluation for effectiveness are close to zero, but just in case, we are rebranding this funding as conflict funding, and now we can unequivocally claim the funding is successful.”

Ambassador Cobia also provided an insight into why, despite tens of millions of dollars pledged to the peace process and to develop ethnic areas, internally displaced people in camps in Kachin and Shan States don’t have adequate food, shelter, medical facilities, or education for children.

“What we found with the Karen and Karenni refugees and IDPs is that if they are forced to flee their homes because of conflict or, well, I don’t usually like to use this phrase, human rights violations, and if the area they come from remains unstable and there are landmines, then they don’t want to return home. They can’t live in camps forever so you basically have to withhold and withdraw aid to force them to return home.”

Ambassador Cobia refused to be drawn on exactly how much money the EU and EU member states have spent on the peace process or what exactly the money has been spent on.

“We established the Joint Peace Fund which has been very successful if coordinating the hiring of foreign consultants, and already you can see the results with most donors now using the same phrases such as ‘complex challenges’, ‘needs to be given time’, ‘bound to be a bumpy road’, ‘bound to be setbacks but overall direction of travel is good’, ‘we have to engage and support, ‘I’m afraid we don’t have that information available’, and ‘this time I promise we really will get back to you as soon as possible with details of end recipients of our peace process funding.’

Ambassador Cobia also dismissed criticism that funding is biased towards the priorities and agenda of the government.

“It baffles me as to why ethnic people in Myanmar expect the European Union of all bodies to support any kind of devolved or local decision making. It goes against everything the EU Commission stands for. Our model is to centralise power in one place and make decisions for the regions, and this is the model we follow in Myanmar as well. We always worked with and through the central government, be it military, former military or now Aung San Suu Kyi. Our centralised approach dovetails very nicely with Aung San Suu Kyi’s approach so we work very well together.”