Soe Htike Aung — If we look at Karenni (Kayah) State, we have various EAOs based on its ethnic minorities.
In democracy nations, the different groups negotiate together and set the common goal then achieve their goal.
Although there are different EAOs in Kayah State, they all have common goal and working on same mission with the purpose of implementing the peace process under the goal of striving for democracy and federal union.
The scheme which they are working together is the healthcare project delivering for the publics at rural areas. The healthcare team organized by EAOs is named as Civil Health and Development Network-CHDN.
CHDN health team was founded on 30th August 2012. In case of forming CHDN, the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) and Myanmar government agreed at state-level ceasefire negotiation meeting to work together the health project within Kayah State.
In 2012, the KNPP and the leaders from each of the five EAOs, who already signed the ceasefire agreement in Kayah State, sat couple of meetings, workshops, and conferences together and founded the CHDN team.
The (Program) Deputy Director of CHDN team said their core purpose of forming this CHDN team is to facilitate the state peace process through health sector.
He said, “We may say it is the remote areas; and, we mainly provide basic healthcare to publics. Another goal is to be able to take part as a role in state peace process.”
It said currently they are working mainly on health projects, and they are also planning to implement the development project in Kayah State.
U Soe Moe Aung said CHDN team is currently working hard to be able to deliver for the whole state, and there are also some cooperation with government departments.
“As we mainly focus to provide service only at related organizations’ control areas, we still could not provide at the extent for whole state. As an extent to enable to provide to the whole state, thus, we try to build network and cooperate together with this government. We also participate in State Health Working Group and cooperate some projects as well.”
The Deputy Director (Management) of CHDN Ms. Elver Lin explained that the trust among organizations or persons has improved because of the cooperation with state’s EAOs in health project after founded the CHDN health team.
“By the armed forces… like the regular cooperation, only CHDN team could prove building trust and cooperating the project together. Many other teams had tried before; however, they could not strive the unity like health department does. As we are now together with the publics and have the concepts of fulfilling the needs of citizens more, we can say this has improved transparency including trust building upon one another after cooperating the health project together.” said Ms. Elver Lin.
It is almost (8) years already they have provided healthcare service at rural areas in Kayah State.
“In what trend CHDN has been achieved? If we say it so, as I said recently, it actually should be implemented by the government. So, what we are doing is to fulfill the needed areas as we can where the government could not reach, and it is not to compete with them in this nation’s political situation.” said Ms. Elver Lin.
CHDN is mainly working to achieve the health system which every citizen is acceptable and has equal benefit. We also heard they are preparing the policy sectors, and other relevant sectors in order to find the way to change the health systems and to form appropriate federal health system in state.
CHDN team is the health team organized with Kayah State EAOs such as Kayan New Land Party (KNLP), Karenni National People’s Liberation Front (KNPLF), Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), Karenni National Solidarity Organization (KNSO), Kayan National Guard (KNG), and Karenni National Peace and Development Party (KNPDP).
KNPP is the group which have not signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), but the rest groups already signed the ceasefire agreement since the reign of military government and transformed to Border Guard Forces, or People’s Militia.
There were frequent conflicts occurred in military government reign. In late 2012, KNPP started implementing the health sectors cooperating with publics after signed the state level ceasefire agreement.
“They will meet more and more, build stronger trust, and provide better service as long as CHDN exist. The situation is going like this.” told Ms. Elver Lin about her perspective that she believes they all together can achieve peace while conducting the health projects with different organizations.
