Kathmandu, Nepal—October 31-November 1, 2025
Researchers from six Asia-Pacific countries met under the theme “Pursuing the path towards peace: People’s resistance and collective solutions.” Across two days, discussions converged on how inter‑state rivalry, militarized development, and critical‑mineral supply chains shape conflicts and civic space—and on research agendas that foreground rights, accountability, and community‑rooted alternatives. Mr. Daya Sagar, Executive Director of the National Campaign for Sustainable Development (Nepal) welcomed the participants followed by an opening remarks by Ms. Julia Puno, General Secretary of APRN. The conference theme was unpacked through four sub-themes—Women and Militarism; Climate, Digitalization, and Militarism; Peace from Workers’ and Rural Peoples’ Perspectives; and, Resistance, Conflicts and Peace.
Mr. Jiten Yumnam of Center for Research and Advocacy-Manipur (CRAM) gave the keynote address and Mr. Aaron Ceradoy of Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants gave an exposition on the situation of the Asia Pacific. These set the frame and tone of the conference – that of intensifying competition over trade routes, bases, and strategic resources is reordering economies and security architectures, with downstream effects from Palestine to South and Southeast Asia. Presenters linked alliance politics, new basing arrangements, and arms pipelines to rising repression and shrinking democratic space, arguing that “green transition” projects—large dams included—can externalize social and environmental risks to frontier regions.
This thematic focus examined long arcs of gendered harm in conflict‑affected contexts, highlighting how exceptional powers and emergency laws constrain safety, livelihoods, and participation. Discussion emphasized the need for data standards and survivor‑centered documentation to improve comparability across sites and inform redress.
Research papers on this sub-theme interrogated critical‑mineral governance and “new extractivism,” then turned to a case study from Assam. Field evidence tied flood frequency and severity downstream of the Doyang Hydroelectric Project to unregulated releases, weak warning systems, and gaps in relief and compensation—prompting calls for transparent reservoir management, inclusion of local rainfall data in forecasting, and recognition of dam‑induced floods as a human‑rights concern.
The morning of the second day tracked social impacts of securitized development. It spotlighted rural peoples, health, rights, and development under militarization. Analyses presented the rural peoples’ situation including the limited or lack of vital social services such as health and connected these to debt‑driven megaprojects, industrial zones, and new investment vehicles to widening inequality and to the consolidation of state–business–military power around “strategic” sites and supply chains. Panel presenters also cited forms of pushback – from local, community-led initiatives to legal forms and policy advocacy to international solidarity
This panel brought two frontlines into focus. Research on Manipur situated the 2023 ethnic violence and mass displacement within longer histories of emergency legislation and troop deployments, documenting buffer‑zone controls, prolonged internet shutdowns, and renewed agreements with armed groups. The paper traced how connectivity corridors and rare‑earth targeting fold local conflict into wider contests among India, China, and allied powers.
A study on Okinawa demonstrated a “double impunity” in cases of violence associated with the U.S. base footprint—rooted in Japanese prosecutorial practices and the Status of Forces Agreement—and showed how feminist and Indigenous advocacy leverages CEDAW to reframe peace as decolonial, gender‑just, and community‑rooted.
Across the program, contributors converged on a diagnosis: militarized security regimes and debt‑steered “modernization,” coupled with critical‑mineral and logistics imperatives, are reshaping the region’s political economy in ways that heighten risk and curtail rights. Rigorous research that contribute to peace with justice is reaffirmed.
A collaborative workshop reaffirmed three anchors for coordinated work—pro‑people economy and trade; militarism and fascism; natural resources and climate justice—and mapped possible research collaborations like comparative designs across borders, shared repositories, and data‑exchange practices that strengthen transparency and reproducibility. APRN renewed their commitment to do research to aid policy, demand accountability, support peoples’ movements because we believe that people’s research is a form of struggle.
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