Myanmar witnessed two major events in the last quarter of 2015. First was the Nov. 8 parliamentary election when the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, won a crushing victory. Before that was the Oct. 15 signing of a ceasefire pact (known as the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement) between the government and eight ethnic armed groups.
The government and the Nationwide Ceasefire Negotiation Team, which represented 16 armed groups, started talking in late 2013. By late 2015, all these groups agreed on the content of the NCA, a 17-page document that included various military and political agreements. They could not agree, however, on whether groups outside the official process could also sign the NCA, and consequently only eight groups signed the pact. There are high hopes that the remaining groups will soon join, if they can agree on entry criteria.
Irrespective of the number of signatories, the NCA is a significant achievement, as it is Myanmar's only experience with multilateral negotiations since the country's independence from Britain in 1948. (Courtesy of Nikkei Asia Review)
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