Across Myanmar and its neighbouring borderlands, protracted conflict, sanctions regimes, illicit economies and gendered forms of agency continue to shape political order and everyday life. These border regions are characterised by overlapping authorities, militarised governance, fragmented markets and the circulation of goods, capital and people through both formal and illicit channels. Understanding how local actors adapt to sanctions, financial oversight, armed conflict and gendered constraints is vital for informing more effective policy responses.
XCEPT’s research on Myanmar and its neighbouring borderlands brings together four projects that examine how conflict actors navigate sanctions, how financial flows from borderland economies move through regional hubs, and how gendered norms create both obstacles and openings for women’s political and economic influence. These projects analyse how conflict economies evolve under international pressure, how anti‑money‑laundering and counterterrorism financing frameworks affect borderland financial networks, and how women in militarised borderlands shape governance, mobility and local security.
The projects
Sanctions and Conflict Economies in the Borderlands of Myanmar and Somalia
This project examines how borderland conflict actors adapt to increasingly targeted sanctions and how these adaptations affect local communities.
This study investigates how regional financial hubs such as Accra, Nairobi and Bangkok interact with illicit financial flows from conflict‑affected borderlands, and how AML and CFT frameworks can strengthen oversight and disrupt conflict‑linked networks.
Gendered authority and feminist agency across the Myanmar‑Bangladesh Rohingya borderlands
This project explores how women involved in border monitoring, armed groups, security structures and civil society navigate contradictory gender expectations to exert influence over territorial control and political economies.
Gendered frontlines: Structural disjunctures and women’s agency in the Indo-Myanmar borderlands
This project examines how women in the militarised Indo–Myanmar borderlands strategically exploit contradictions between overlapping gender systems to reshape conflict dynamics.