Humanitarian Assistance For Displaced Persons From Myanmar

This book is one of four volumes on a major empirical migration study by leading Thai migration specialists from Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok) for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This volume examines the protracted refugee situation at the Thai–Myanmar border. Displaced persons are kept in closed settlements, and this has limited their self-reliance. A resettlement program has been implemented and many refugees have been accepted in resettlement countries. Repatriation is not recommended as a durable solution unless Myanmar becomes a safe place for return. Funding and intervention policies of international organizations and NGOs vary. Donors prefer to switch humanitarian assistance to development aid. The book provides realistic policy recommendations for a durable solution for refugees at the borders. Practitioners and policymakers from governments, international organizations and NGOs will benefit from its findings. The volume is also helpful for anyone studying forced migration and its denouement in the globalized age.

Conducting research in a humanitarian crisis raises a variety of particular challenges including the following: How do you make sure your research does not cause further harm to people affected by a crisis? What can you do to ensure high-quality data collection with an inexperienced team? How is humanitarian response coordinated and how can this structure be used to support research? How can the local community be empowered throughout the process of conducting research? This study explores these questions and more by looking at lessons learnt from a large-scale humanitarian research project conducted in Myanmar. Drawing on a variety of methods including 22,280 household-level interviews, mapping, and focus group discussions, the humanitarian profiling exercise aimed to shed light on the situation of Rohingya and Rakhine displaced by the 2012 inter-communal conflict.

Background. Aung San Sun Kyi, the NLD, and the SPDC'S failed national dialogue -- Fifty years of ethnic conflict -- The Karen -- Ceasefires -- The monk's story. -- Human rights abuses of the Karen. Human rights and humanitarian law violations in Karen State -- Forced labor. -- Internal displacement. Why they are displaced -- How displacement happens -- Patterns of forced relocation -- Consequences of displacement. Lessons from ceasefires in Kachin and Mon states Kachin state -- Mon state -- Lessons learned. -- Humanitarian responses. Humanitarian agencies in Burma -- Policy options. -- Recommendations. To the Burmese government, the "State Development and Peace Council"--To the KNU and KNLA -- To the SPDC AND KNU -- To the United Nations, international aid agencies, and other donors -- To the government of the Royal Kingdom of Thailand. -- Acknowledgements.

This paper written for the US Committee for Refugees (USCR) is based on two site visits to the Thai-Burmese border in July 1989 and April 1990. Mr Robinson, a USCR policy analyst, focuses principally on the Burmese students and ethnic minorities who have crossed the border and sought aid and protection in Thailand. He begins by reviewing recent events in Burma (Myanmar) as they affected students and the flight from the cities after September 1980. Attention is given to the policies of both the Burmese and Thai Governments towards the students who arrived on the border. The evolution of the governments' policies is shown through the history of the joint repatriation centre at a military airfield outside the Thai city of Tak and various incidents of 'forced repatriation'. Mr Robinson describes cross-border aid to the student camps starting in late 1988 and the challenges it faces. Information shows the location of sites of Burmese refugee and displaced persons camps, populations of the camps, and known repatriations. In addition to the plight of students, Mr Robinson focuses on ethnic minorities like the Karen and their situation in camps in Thailand. He also examines briefly other populations of concern who have either been displaced inside Burma or who reside in Thailand and may have reason to fear returning to Thailand. After looking at aid and asylum in Thailand, the author concludes with recommendations for the Burmese concerning asylum, humanitarian assistance, resettlement and sanctions.

For over sixty years, conflict between state forces and armed ethnic groups was ongoing in parts of the borderlands of Burma. Ethnic minority communities were subjected to systematic and widespread abuses by an increasingly complex patchwork of armed state and non-state actors. Populations in more remote and disputed border areas typically had little to no access to even basic healthcare and education services. As part of its counter-insurgency campaign, the military state also historically restricted international humanitarian access to civilian populations in unstable border areas. It was in this context that "cross-border aid" to Burma had developed, as an alternative mechanism for channelling assistance to populations denied aid through more conventional systems. Yet by the late 2000s, national and international changes had significant impacts on an aid debate, which had important political and ethical implications. Through an ethnographic study of a cross-border aid organisation working on the Thailand-Burma border, this book focuses on the political and ethical dilemmas of "humanitarian government". It explores the ways in which aid systems come to be defined as legitimate or illegitimate, humanitarian or "un-humanitarian", in an international context that has witnessed the multiplication of often-conflicting humanitarian systems and models. It examines how an "embodied history" of violence can shape the worldviews and actions of local humanitarian actors, as well as institutions created to mitigate human suffering. It goes on to look at the complex and often-invisible webs of local organisations, international NGOs, donors, armed groups and other actors, which can develop in a cross-border and extra-legal context ¿ a context where competing constructions of systems as legitimate or illegitimate are highlighted. Exploring the history of humanitarianism from the local aid perspective of Burma, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian Studies, Anthropology of Humanitarian Aid and Development Studies.

Since the end of the Cold War, increasing numbers of people have been forced to leave their homes as a result of armed conflict, internal strife, and systematic violations of human rights. Whereas refugees crossing national borders benefit from an established system of international protection and assistance, those who are displaced internally suffer from an absence of legal or institutional bases for their protection and assistance from the international community. This book analyzes the causes and consequences of displacement, including its devastating impact both within and beyond the borders of affected countries. It sets forth strategies for preventing displacement, a special legal framework tailored to the needs of the displaced, more effective institutional arrangements at the national, regional, and international levels, and increased capacities to address the protection, human rights, and reintegration and development needs of the displaced.

Includes statistics.

Foreword - Francis Deng