Sexual and gender-based violence in Myanmar and the gendered impact of its ethnic conflicts in English trafficking for forced marriage and childbearing into China. 136 Women are vulnerable to trafficking by means of fraud or deception, particularly from people claiming to arrange a traditional marriage with Kachin women on the Chinese side of the border, or to arrange for their employment.137 66. Women’s leadership and representation in decision-making roles also remains at low levels in Kachin and Shan States. In Kachin, women hold only two state-level ministerial positions.138 Women in IDP camps also have limited access to decision-making structures and camp management committees.139 In non-government controlled areas, women are underrepresented in leadership roles and so they are de facto excluded from representing EAOs’ political wings in the peace process. Their absence can be explained by the prerequisite of possessing combat experience, to which they do not have access due to gender discriminatory EAO policies.140 Despite these exclusionary factors, northern Myanmar benefits from an active civil society, especially from women-led organizations. 67. The unequal representation of women from ethnic minority groups in the peace process is an additional contributing factor to gender discrimination and marginalization.141 Women’s participation in the formal peace process has been very limited and has not reached the minimum 30 per cent of representatives proposed in the negotiations for the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement of 2015 (NCA) and included in the Framework for Political Dialogue of 2016. Neither the Joint Monitoring Committee set up for the NCA, nor other coordination mechanisms established for the peace process have included women in any significant way.142 V. Sexual and gender-based violence as a hallmark of the Tatmadaw 68. In its 2018 report, the Mission found that sexual violence was a hallmark of the Tatmadaw’s military operations. The scale, brutality and systematic nature of these violations, especially as perpetrated against the Rohingya population and ethnic groups in northern Myanmar, indicated that rape and other forms of sexual violence were part of a deliberate strategy to intimidate, terrorise and punish a civilian population, and were used as a tactic of war.143 Sexual violence has also been a recurring feature of military operations 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 18 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Humanitarian Health and Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand, Estimating trafficking of Myanmar women for forced marriage and childbearing in China (December 2018); Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand, Pushed to the Brink: Conflict and Human Trafficking on the Kachin-Burma Border (June 2013); Human Rights Watch, “Give Us a Baby and We’ll Let You Go” Trafficking of Kachin “Brides” from Myanmar to China (21 March 2019). Women head of households seek work in China where wages are higher and then are sold as brides to Chinese men and subjected to sexual slavery to have children; Human Rights Watch, “Give Us a Baby and We’ll Let You Go” Trafficking of Kachin “Brides” from Myanmar to China (21 March 2019); Gender Profile for Humanitarian Action, and across the Humanitarian-Peace-Development Nexus (Rakhine, Kachin and Northern Shan Myanmar) January 2019. Only 0,25% of ward/village tract administrators being women nationwide; Oxfam and Trocaire Life on Hold (2017). Gender Profile for Humanitarian Action, and across the Humanitarian-Peace-Development Nexus (Rakhine, Kachin and Northern Shan Myanmar) January 2019. PM-010, PM-011, see also Chapter VII. Sexual and gender-based violence by non-state armed groups. Per last Panglong Conference Count, women constituted 17 per cent of participants in the peace process; K-070. See also Human Rights Watch, A Gentlemen’s Agreement, Women’s Participation in Burma’s Peace Negotiations and Political Transition (2016). S/2019/591; Background note for the Security Council’s Informal Experts Group on Women, Peace and Security, Myanmar, 4 June 2019. A/HRC/39/CRP.2. para. 1371-1374, also see the use of rape and other forms of sexual violence by the military. See also: http://www.statecounsellor.gov.mm/en/node/545