According to Ko Sai Lek, the coordinator of BNI’s Myanmar Peace Monitor, the press conference was designed to raise awareness among journalists, international organizations, and members of the public about Burma’s peace process. The conference discussed the role of various actors involved in the peace process, including armed ethnic groups, refugees, and Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government.

Ko Sai Lek said: “the benefit we got [from this launch] is that the attendees, who included international embassies’ officials and journalists, got to hear what happened at the peace talks and the political talks and what issues were discussed with the ethnic armed groups.

Another speaker at the press conference was U Kun Sai, managing director of the Union Institute and founder of the Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), noted that “The conference covered the peace talks; including the peace talks in areas where fighting is ongoing, conflicts in Rakhine State, religious conflicts, and the bomb explosions that have occurred in several Yangon townships.”

About 30 people attended the launch of this year’s “Deciphering Myanmar’s Peace Process.” The attendees included foreign embassy officials, senior journalists, and members of international organizations.

U Kun Sai said that not as many journalists as expected attended the event because it occurred on the same day that Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was removed from office by Thailand’s Constitutional Court.

BNI’s previous report relating to the peace process was launched in September 2013 at the Myanmar Journalists Network office in Rangoon. Entitled “Economics of Peace and Conflict,” that report covers the period from 2011—when President Thein Sein took office and initiated peace talks with various armed ethnic groups—until mid-2012, and it focuses on how ongoing investment projects in Myanmar have affected the peace process.