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VI. Humanitarian Responses

Humanitarian agencies in Burma

In June 2001 the heads of mission of eight U.N. agencies in Rangoon publicly expressed their support for “strengthening human capital, developing leadership capacity, and encouraging a more dynamic civil society will contribute to laying the foundations for democratic processes.”¹²³

However, the topic of external assistance to IDPs, whether in relocation sites, ceasefire areas or in hiding, is very sensitive. Although the role of foreign aid is limited, it can contribute towards the creation of an enabling environment, strengthening local efforts to achieve peace and development. It is vital that donors and international agencies entering Burma, via refugee communities, across the border, or through Rangoon, realize that they are not operating in a void. Impressive local initiatives exist, and are worthy of support. The challenge is how to foster the growth of civil society, without overwhelming its limited absorption capacities. Donors should not just concentrate on a narrow set of professional, western-style NGOs. In fostering the development of local NGOs, a nexus between development and democracy may gradually emerge.

Effective humanitarian assistance is often a function of access to affected communities, awareness of the particular issues at stake––including protection needs––and the magnitude of assistance offered. In this case, one of the key issues will be whether international or local agencies take the lead in assisting IDPs, and how they will provide that assistance. The SPDC has asked UNHCR to assist IDPs in areas of refugee return, while the KNU Foreign Affairs spokesman, David Taw, has indicated a preference for partnerships with local NGOs and CBOs.¹²⁴ These developments may open the possibility of increased humanitarian and development assistance to Karen (and potentially other) IDPs. One of the key issues will be which organizations gain access to IDP communities, and how.

Although many services to IDPs can and should be delivered by CBOs and local NGOs, they still need the political and technical support of international agencies. Only international agencies are able to offer the monitoring and protection that the long-suffering civilian population urgently requires. Collaboration with appropriate partners is critical.

Aid from inside Burma

Although some Rangoon-based international agencies such as the ICRC and UNICEF are able to assist displaced people in Burma, they do not target IDPs as such. In cases where international agencies do provide assistance to displaced populations, this is usually done inadvertently, as often the agency concerned is not aware that its clients or beneficiaries have at some time in the past been displaced. It is therefore important for aid agencies to be aware that relocated communities should not necessarily be targeted separately from other vulnerable populations.

The Burmese government does not permit international agencies access to the more tightly controlled Relocation Centers. Most humanitarian and other assistance reaching relocation sites comes from the affected communities themselves. This may take the form of self-help initiatives undertaken by extended family and ethnic nationality networks, often organized and mediated by local religious leaders. A more systematic approach has been adopted by some CBOs and local NGOs, which have established low-profile aid programs in a number of relocation sites in eastern Burma.

In such cases, access to displaced populations must be negotiated with local Tatmadaw commanders and state officials, usually by local or national religious leaders. Groups involved in such activities may be accused of abetting the state’s draconian forced relocation program. However, in providing relief in partnership with relocated populations, local NGOs help to build community networks and develop capacities. Such humanitarian efforts strengthen local civil society and human capital, in ways which contribute towards peace-making and conflict-transformation capacities, and indirectly support processes of political transition. Over the past two years in particular, local networks inside Burma have enhanced their capacities for assessing needs, and delivering assistance to IDPs in government-controlled areas.

Cross-border assistance

International agencies working inside the country do not have access to the zones of ongoing armed conflict in eastern Burma where protection and other humanitarian vulnerabilities are particularly acute. While some local NGOs and CBOs, especially church and Buddhist networks, do have some access to these areas, coverage is quite limited, and will remain so, until such time as ceasefires in these areas are consolidated.

Some aid does reach IDPs in hiding from across the Thailand border. As noted by BERG, “the Thai authorities do not allow any registered NGOs … officially to develop programs of assistance across the border, although there is endorsement of temporary cross-border assistance in certain instances.”¹²⁵

Since the early 1990s, Karen––and later Chin, Shan, Karenni and Mon––teams have provided humanitarian relief and undertaken some community development and educational work among displaced communities in zones of ongoing armed conflict in eastern Burma. In October 2004 the TBBC reported that 30 percent of IDP households surveyed had accessed aid over the past year (17 percent in relocation sites, 35 percent in hiding sites, and 49 percent in ceasefire areas).¹²⁶

Thailand border-based groups’ strategic planning and research capacities are generally more developed than those working on displacement issues from inside Burma. In recent years, local and international agencies providing cross-border assistance to IDPs in eastern Burma have begun to develop sophisticated data collection and analysis tools.

Beneficiaries of cross-border aid are usually a self-selecting sub-group of IDPs in hiding, having put their trust in the KNU, KNPP, and the NMSP. The main cross-border assistance groups strive for impartiality by providing assistance to all in need.¹²⁷ However, they are not impartial, as they act in solidarity with armed opposition groups. For these reasons, donors have insisted that their programs be carefully monitored.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Since February 2004, UNHCR has conducted several assessment missions to Karen State and Tenasserim Division. In March 2004 the agency announced that it had negotiated access to refugee return areas in eastern Burma.¹²⁸ With funding of about U.S.$800,000-1 million for the year 2004, it will support projects in community health education and de-mining. Under its arrangement with the government, UNHCR has gained access to most of the eleven townships in Burma (Tenasserim Division, Mon State and Karen State) from which the majority of refugees in Thailand have fled. For the first time it has gained access to Thai border areas from inside Burma via Rangoon. The agency has also been requested by the government to assist with IDP reintegration in areas of refugee return, though not elsewhere.¹²⁹

In mid-late 2004, UNHCR began to implement micro-projects in these townships, upgrading local infrastructure in areas of possible refugee return or in places where displaced persons may want to go. Despite some optimism within UNHCR about these developments, grave concerns remain over the extent of U.N. access in these border areas. As of October 2004, international staff had only been allowed to visit areas under government control. The Burmese authorities are likely to try to convince U.N. staff with modest knowledge of Burma that conditions in a few model villages are representative of the situation in more remote areas.¹³⁰ However, UNHCR has made efforts to make it clear to the SPDC that it does not consider current conditions as being conducive to the return of refugees and that a settlement between the government and insurgent groups is an essential prerequisite for refugee return. UNHCR’s regular monitoring trips to parts of eastern Burma must be seen as only the first stage in establishing a genuinely protective field presence, in which it is able to advocate and intervene with the authorities on behalf of vulnerable populations in border areas.

In a worrying development, UNHCR reportedly plans to implement health and education programs in areas of refugee return through the Myanmar Red Cross (MRC), though it has dropped plans to work with the Myanmar Maternal and Child Welfare Association (MMCWA). The MMCWA was formerly led by General Khin Nyunt’s wife. Both groups are widely considered to be fronts for the Burmese military. The agency already works with these organizations in its programs with repatriated Rohingya refugees in Arakan (Rakhine) State, where the U.N. has struggled to protect returned refugees from further rounds of abuse.¹³¹

A better alternative would be for international agencies to form partnerships with local civil society groups, which are already working on the ground in many areas. These include CBOs active in government-controlled areas, including some relocations sites, and those working cross-border from Thailand, with IDPs in hiding, and in some ceasefire zones. Aid agencies must not be prevented by the government or ethnic armed groups from independently providing assistance to populations at risk; they should resist efforts by authorities to interfere with the impartial delivery of assistance or manipulate it for other purposes, such as to extend military control. Wherever possible, external support should empower local communities and civil society groups, many of which are operational in areas inaccessible to international agencies. It would undermine assistance efforts, for example, if U.N. agencies could only gain access to armed conflict-affected areas, including ceasefire zones, in the company of the Tatmadaw, or state-penetrated NGOs.

Other U.N. agencies

Since 1993, UNDP activities in Burma have been restricted to “programmes having grass-roots-level impact in a sustainable manner.” This mandate, which is highly unusual for the U.N., is designed to limit the agency’s engagement with the government. The UNDP Human Development Initiative works “particularly in the areas of primary health care, the environment, HIV/AIDS, training and education, and food security.”¹³²

Unlike most U.N. agencies, the U.N. Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) engages directly with ceasefire groups. In partnership with the government and the (ex-CPB) United Wa State Army (UWSA) ceasefire group, the UNODC and its international NGO implementing partners have built schools, dams and other facilities in the Wa sub-state (northern Shan State). They reportedly have also had some success in reducing opium cultivation in Kokang and UWSA-controlled areas.¹³³ However, according to one assessment, proposed “community development concepts … sometimes conflicted with the top-down (Wa) Authority approach. When efforts were made to involve the villagers … the Authority felt threatened.”¹³⁴

Although the UNODC has responded to UWSA calls for more infrastructure and agricultural assistance, efforts to promote community development and the emergence of CBOs have been largely unsuccessful. The U.N. has recently negotiated an agreement with the UWSA, under which community-based development methods will be allowed by the Wa authorities.¹³⁵ However, members of the leadership of the UWSA were indicted on drug charges in a U.S. court in January 2005 and one faction of the UWSA (UWSA 171 Division) has in 2005 attacked the outskirts of the SSA base of Loi Taileng, which protects a few thousand IDPs, calling into question the good faith of the UWSA in these efforts.¹³⁶

A further important consideration is the UWSA’s forced relocation since 1999 of up to 125,000 villagers from northern Shan State as part of its effort to eradicate opium production in the Wa hills and extend the boundaries of Wa State. These IDPs were moved to non-state controlled relocation sites in the southern part of the main UWSA ceasefire zone and to the UWSA’s Southern Command area on the Thailand border, where several thousand Shan and other local inhabitants have been displaced to make way for the newcomers.

Another area where the U.N. may address humanitarian needs, while developing the roles and capacities of local civil society, is with HIV/AIDS programming. International agencies in Burma have access to a U.S.$35 million fund, as part of a coordinated HIV/AIDS campaign. Donors view this initiative as a test case for whether the U.N. system in Burma can carve out a sphere of greater independence, and exert a greater influence over government policy. Another key issue is whether the U.N. and international NGOs can establish mechanisms for building local NGO aid absorption capacity in this sector.

The need for more and better data

Until fairly recently, little attention was paid to the situation of IDPs in Burma. The increased concern with internal displacement in the east of the country since the late-1990s reflects a growing awareness of the plight of IDPs world-wide, and a realization that most refugees in Thailand had previously spent extensive periods as IDPs before crossing the border.

As a series of insurgent strongholds fell to the Tatmadaw during the 1990s, there was no longer any relative sanctuary behind the front-lines of armed conflict to which people displaced by fighting could spontaneously relocate and establish new villages. The IDP problem was therefore pushed up against the Thailand border at the same time that the Thai government’s asylum policy hardened. Fewer refugees were allowed into Thailand.

Most publicly available data on displacement in rural Burma, and Karen State in particular, therefore comes from humanitarian, human rights, and activist groups working in Burma across the border from Thailand. The quality of such reports is generally very high. However, they tend to focus almost exclusively on IDPs in hiding in the war zones––the most needy, but not the only category of IDP in Burma. Much less is known about displaced people in government-controlled areas, including relocation site residents, and those who spontaneously relocate to existing towns and villages.

Only by undertaking comprehensive, participatory surveys will local or international agencies be able to gauge what IDPs in different situations actually want and need––that is, what kind of remedy to their particular situation is appropriate. In some cases, the desired outcome will be local integration, in others relocation to another area, while in yet others it will be to return home, even if that home is long in the past. As in refugee repatriation, the principle of an informed and voluntary choice should be central to any decisions addressing displacement situations in Burma. Representatives from displaced communities, for example, should be given opportunities to investigate the situation in possible return areas before deciding whether to return or to seek some other durable solution.

The research findings presented above caution against assuming that all IDPs necessarily want to return “home.” Many will wish to do so, but others will want to stay put and therefore need assistance in securing livelihoods and protection where they are currently settled. In such cases, limiting aid to IDPs may not be appropriate, especially if displaced people are living alongside the non-displaced or those not recently displaced. The focus instead should be on the whole community, from a perspective of the protection of economic and social rights, as well as civil and political rights.

Policy options

Since 2004 some IDPs have begun to return from hiding places in the jungle and from relocation sites to begin the task of rebuilding their lives and their communities.¹³⁷ However, the Tatmadaw’s continued use of forced labor, confiscation of farmland, and arbitrary taxation remains a severe constraint on any post-conflict rehabilitation.

IDP return is a delicate process. The needs and wishes of IDPs in Burma are not well known. Fully understanding the needs of IDPs requires comprehensive, participatory surveys. An admittedly limited Human Rights Watch survey asked informants what they felt it would take “to change in their current situation, in order to be able to lead the kind of life they have reason to value.” Only half wanted to return their “original” home and/ or land, if conditions allowed. As previously noted, returning home is a problematic concept, given that most people had moved numerous times and it was not usually clear to which of various previous settlements informants wished to return––although they often appeared to want to return to their place of birth. Most people said that they would like to remain where they are, if conditions improved. Nearly half the Karen IDPs told Human Rights Watch that they were most interested in opportunities to breed livestock and farm properly and to improve their income and food security. A third of interviewees wanted better access to education, health services, and proper sanitation and water.

As in refugee repatriation, the principle of informed voluntariness should prevail above all other considerations. Any attempts to assist displaced Karen villagers or refugees must take account of the ongoing problems experienced by conflict-affected populations in other parts of Burma. The protection of civilians must be a priority. At a minimum, landmine clearance should precede any major return initiative.¹³⁸