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- Publicly and officially order the Tatmadaw and
other state security agencies to end all human rights absuses and
humanitarian law violations against civilians, including extrajudicial
executions, torture, sexual violence, land confiscation, and forced labor.
- Create a credible legal process to provide redress and to
hold perpetrators, regardless of rank, accountable for human rights and
humanitarian law violations. Make this process transparent so as to create
public and international confidence that a new policy has been devised and
is being implemented.
- Invite the Special Rapporteur of the U.N. Commission on
Human Rights on the situation of human rights and the U.N.
Secretary-General's Representative on the Human Rights of Internally
Displaced Persons to visit Burma and provide unfettered access to areas of
conflict and displacement, including Relocation Centers and Villages, to assess
the situation on the ground and to make recommendations to assist IDPs.
- Allow impartial international humanitarian agencies to
provide assistance and protection to IDPs.
- Recognize the legitimate and necessary role of independent
NGOs and CBOs in providing assistance to IDPs, in receiving funds to
provide such assistance, in working with local communities and individuals
to ascertain their needs, and to advocate on behalf of IDPs.
- Publicly and officially order the KNLA and any other armed
groups operating in Karen State to end all human rights abuses and
humanitarian law violations against civilians, including forced labor.
Take appropriate action against persons responsible for human rights
abuses and humanitarian law violations.
- Publicly pledge to respect the U.N. Guiding Principles on
Internal Displacement.
- Ensure that any ceasefire agreement includes specific
commitments on human rights protections, including full access to local
and international monitors, including from the United Nations and the
International Committee of the Red Cross.
- Ensure that any ceasefire agreement includes provisions
for regular meetings at the field-level that include Tatmadaw
officers and government officials, KNLA officers and KNU officials,
villagers representatives, and human rights monitors to monitor the
situation on the ground and address the inevitable post-ceasefire rights
violations.
- Offer ordinary villagers a greater role in political
negotiations and in identifying community needs and directing and
delivering aid.
- Work together to create a strategy to address the SPDC,
KNU, and other armed groups and with civil society to provide greater
human rights protection, to better monitor the human rights and
humanitarian situation, to provide necessary humanitarian assistance, and
to engage in joint advocacy efforts on behalf of IDPs.
- Engage in policy discussions with local and national
government, and ceasefire and non-ceasefire groups, regarding health,
education, food, livelihoods, land and property rights, landmines,
agriculture, HIV/AIDS, gender, children, and basic needs.
- Ensure that the delivery of humanitarian assistance is
carried out independently without unnecessary interference from government
or military officials and opposition armed groups. Resist efforts by
authorities to interfere with the impartial delivery of assistance or
manipulate it for other purposes, such as to extend military control.
- Provide assistance to develop civil society among a wide
array of nongovernmental and community based organizations.
- Ensure that international aid efforts also have a capacity
building objective that attempts to identify and support local NGOs, CBOs,
and individuals, especially among under-represented groups (such as
non-Christians, minorities within States, women), to build their capacity
to deliver assistance and to act as advocates for IDPs. For example:
- Define a conscious goal of empowering local communities
and civil society groups. Donors should reach out to and work with all
communities, not just elites and narrow groups of westernized NGOs.
- Work with CBOs and local NGOs to develop mechanisms for
ensuring accountability to donors and beneficiaries, and to promote
impartiality, inclusiveness and participation, protection, conflict
resolution and gender awareness.
- Avoid donor-driven initiatives by encouraging genuine
partnership and joint ownership of projects with civil society actors.
- Coordinate donor reporting and evaluation requirements.
- Be flexible in relations with civil society groups,
especially regarding monitoring in remote areas. If local NGOs
demonstrate accountability, it is not always necessary for expatriate
staff to visit all project sites.
- Be prepared to respond to small-scale project proposals,
in order to nurture the development of fledgling CBOs. Consider providing
core funding to local NGOs.
- Provide strategic planning and organizational development
advice to local NGOs and CBOs.
- Initiate regular international-local NGO forums at the
State level.
- Work with national and local government, including
ceasefire and non-ceasefire groups, to build schools and train teachers,
provide in-service training and teaching materials, promote local language
enhancement policies, and provide non-formal, vocational and skills
training and materials; to build clinics, train medics, and provide
medicine; to establish micro-credit programs; to support natural resource
management and environmental protection; and to work with community social
and business leaders to develop sustainable commercial activities, such as
community forestry and agriculture projects.
- Donors should also work with non-ceasefire groups to
provide humanitarian assistance to IDPs, as such groups often protect
IDPs. Efforts should be made to create a dialogue to better map highly
vulnerable IDP movements and to provide assistance. This should be done in
the spirit of independent and impartial humanitarian assistance and the protection
of civilians.
- Provide high quality security and protection training to
all field staff.
- Incorporate Peace and Conflict Impact Assessments (PCIA)
into the planning and evaluation phase of all projects. Needs and
vulnerability assessments should mainstream protection issues.
- Fund studies and surveys on health, education, food,
livelihoods, land and property rights, landmines, agriculture, HIV/AIDS,
gender, children, and other basic needs in conflict and ceasefire areas in
order to draw lessons about how to operate in each area and to identify
the benefits of ceasefires for IDPs and others. Develop participatory
research programs to identify specific information gaps and humanitarian
protection needs.
- Identify affected communities local protection and
self-help strategies and capacities and the impact of local and
international assistance and protection interventions. Conduct research in
partnership with and provide appropriate training to local populations,
CBOs, and appropriate government officials, such as those working in
health, education, or agriculture.
- Ensure that advocacy recommendations and action plans are
drafted in close consultation with affected communities, with special
attention to the participation of women. Aim for concrete proposals
regarding the types of changes required and how these might be
implemented. Opposition and activist groups must demonstrate that their
recommendations reflect the needs and aspirations of affected populations.
- Extend asylum to all those fleeing ongoing conflict and
human rights abuses in Burma, protecting Burmese refugees from refoulement
and allowing new asylum seekers access to Thai territory. Ensure that
conditions for return to Burma in safety and dignity to be genuinely and
durably established prior to commencing any organized return or
repatriation from Thailand.
- Give clear guarantees to humanitarian agencies that they
may work without interference and without fear of closure by the Thai authorities
if they advocate for either the rights of IDPs in Burma or asylum seekers and refugees in Thailand.
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