Young Leaders For Myanmar’s Inclusive Democratic Future
Engaging Civil Society to Rebuild Peace Prospects – Canada- Myanmar IDRC Research Fellowship
To encourage and enable the participation of Rohingya in advancing reconciliation efforts and crafting the foundations of Myanmar’s inclusive democratic future, the Parliamentary Centre is offering two capacity-building fellowships for young Rohingya leaders. The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) makes support for this initiative possible.
The Program will equip two young Rohingya leaders with in-depth knowledge and experience regarding the functioning of inclusive parliamentary democracies and practical advocacy and leadership skills. It will also allow them to amplify Rohingya voices and participation in building Myanmar’s future democratic order by using their newly acquired knowledge and skills to provide inputs to the ongoing federal democracy charter process and other reconciliation and democratization efforts.
The Parliamentary Centre will facilitate two half-year parliamentary fellowship placements: one in Canada and the second in one or several countries in South-East Asia.
In shaping the fellowship program in Canada, the Parliamentary Centre will undertake an innovative approach where the fellow will spend portions of the five months period placed within several different institutions, including Canada’s Federal Parliament and provincial assemblies, civil society organization(s) working in the field of inclusive governance (such as the Parliamentary Centre itself), government institutions and, potentially, Canadian media. This approach will allow the fellow to be exposed to the different perspectives and roles of the various actors in Canada’s federal democracy while also exposing the fellow to the different levels of governance in our federation: federal and provincial. The fellow will also benefit from training opportunities on practical leadership skills, such as advocacy and communication skills, negotiation skills, intercultural communication, networking, and more.
Similarly, the half-year internship placement in South-East Asia would have portions where various institutions would host the fellow. In this case, the fellowship could also be split between placements in more than one country. Preference will be given to hosting the intern in societies with experience in federal and/or decentralized multi-cultural forms of government (for example, the Philippines and/or Indonesia).
The fellow will be supported to establish and maintain ongoing contacts with elected members, CSOs, and other key actors in the ongoing reconciliation and federal democracy process in Myanmar. The goal would be to facilitate a process where the fellows will provide targeted inputs into the process, sharing experiences gained from the program and putting into action their newly acquired leadership skills. The participants would also receive and respond to specific requests to use their fellowship as a way to undertake practical research on key areas of the evolving federal democracy charter process.