In response to media reports that the State Counselor will be calling a meeting made up of ceasefire monitoring and political dialogue committees, PaO leader Col Hkun Okker has offered a suggestion that unless it is going to be just an informal brainstorming session, the first meeting should well be the Joint Implementation Coordination Meeting (JICM).

“The JICM was formed to implement the NCA (that was signed on 15 October 2015),” he said. “The two principal working bodies: Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee (JMC) to deal with military matters, and the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC) to deal with political matters, were formed by it. It would be like putting the cart before the horse to call a meeting of the JMC and UPDJC first.”

Apart from forming the JMC and the UPDJC, the JICM is responsible for resolving “any issues (and disputes) faced during the implementation of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement”, undertaking assessments of the implementation as deemed necessary, and ratifying military Code of Conduct (CoC) and Terms of Reference (ToRs) of JMC and UPDJC.

It is supposed to meet every three months. The last JICM was held in December, with 8 leaders from the government side and 8 leaders from the EAO side. 75% of them must be present to achieve a quorum at each meeting, and two-thirds of votes from each side to pass a resolution.