Statement of CSO Forum Coordination Committee on signing the NCA to international governments, donor organizations and INGOs

CSO Forum Coordination Committee recognizes the efforts made and technical and financial assistances consistently provided by international governments, donor organizations and INGOs to Union Peace Working Committee (UPWC) and ethnic senior delegations for reaching and signing of Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) which is one of the basic necessities for the country to pave way for halting armed conflicts and its consequences of miseries and ill-effects.

For reaching and signing agreement, the preliminary meetings are important and also it will be important that the agreement must reflect wishes and attitudes of the people who will directly either suffer or benefit from this agreement. Hence CSO Forum urges all concerning parties to make full awareness on this crucial agreement among the people before signing on it.

This NCA agreement will be the historical agreement which will stop the longest civil war in the whole world so that CSOs firmly believes that the agreement will be profound and having full of essence only after being signed by all ethnic armed groups.

Since ongoing and raging armed conflicts are taking place in the areas in which the union government has agreement with international investors for conducting various commercial projects and also over 80% of armed conflicts are raging in these areas, omission of some ethnic armed groups operating in these areas from signing the NCA will mean resolving geopolitics by means of war.

So we profoundly and solemnly call for all-inclusiveness by all armed ethnic groups in meaningful implementation of NCA and starting deliberations on subsequent political framework dialogue.

Similarly we wish to urge all concerning parties to stop immediately and taking action on killing innocent people arbitrarily, committing sexual violence, using fighter and helicopters in the conflict along with their heavy weapons which are capable of mass destructions, expansion of deployment their troops in ethnic inhabited areas despite of ongoing talks on reaching the agreement. Otherwise the people will lose their trust on the ongoing peace process.

Additionally there are many displaced people in these recent conflict areas and these displaced people have the right to live in full human dignity so that we request the international governments, donor organizations and INGOs to call the union government for letting all humanitarian CSOs and NGOs at home and abroad including UN to provide assistance for their safety and basic humanitarian needs and livelihood.

Moreover we assume that inclusion of clauses on extractive industry and international reporting systems such as EITI in NCA will have negative effect by giving opportunity to conduct extractive industry in the conflict areas and its peripheral zones.

Building cross-border highways and other local highways, making heavy investments in mining and mineral explorations, building industrial zones in ethnic areas which are exercising different land policies, taxation policies and investment and development policies will make escalation of armed conflicts so that we call international governments, donor organizations and INGOs for urging and advising to all concerning parties to stop such investments and conducting businesses in conflict areas before signing the NCA.

We demand to give us support and assistance in forming the regional-based ‘Local Civilian Ceasefire Monitoring Team’ officially for the purpose of implementing the peace process in full transparency, accountability and responsibility for guaranteeing the lasting peace. We also request to give technical and financial assistance to form international and local monitoring teams which will systematically record and monitor if such technical and financial assistances are beneficial to the peace process.