The Uprooted of Burma: Security Begins with Food
"We are upland farmers, but landmines have been planted around our fields so we dare not cultivate our crops. It's like our land has been occupied by someone else." Karenni farmer, Burma.
Burma was once considered the 'rice basket' of Asia. So vast was its annual rice yield that it could produce enough for domestic consumption and still be among the world's leading rice-exporting countries. However, forty years of military dictatorship have reversed Burma's food security situation and the regime's policies have significantly affected the livelihoods of rural people. Most disturbingly, the junta's tactic of deliberate starvation of ethnic people living in the border states has created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Since 1996, more than 2,500 villages in ethnic states have been destroyed as part of the Burmese army's counter-insurgency campaign, or to clear the way for mega-projects such as hydro-electric developments and gas pipelines. In this process, villagers' crops are either confiscated or destroyed. Army battalions are not given full rations and thus feed themselves by expropriating food or land in rural areas. The creation of food scarcity in the ethnic states is clearly a tactic of war.
The consequence is the displacement of massive numbers of people. An estimated one million people are internally displaced in Burma. Most flee into the mountains and remote jungle regions and try to survive without access to health services or secure food supplies. Another million people have fled over the borders of Burma into neighbouring countries where they eke out a living as illegal migrant labourers in tea estates, plantations and factories. The humanitarian crisis facing displaced people, both inside Burma and on Burma's borders, is monumental.
It is a huge challenge to deal with the crisis faced by people displaced inside Burma. A few courageous local groups, including counterparts of Inter Pares, organize cross-border food and health assistance from neighbouring countries. Not only is this work extremely dangerous, but these remote mountain and jungle regions are largely inaccessible and this assistance can reach only a fraction of people in need.
In Thailand, Inter Pares supports the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an organization providing basic food assistance to refugee camps. The TBBC has organized agricultural training in the camps and provides seeds and basic implements so that refugees can supplement their diets with fresh vegetables. In this way, refugees are able to regain some personal control over their own food security as well as learn new skills which will be put to use when they eventually return home.
As the people of Burma attempt to survive in the midst of war, the crisis cannot be adequately addressed until peace is achieved and the army withdraws from ethnic nationality areas. Inter Pares, along with other international groups, is promoting the intervention of the UN Security Council in order to bring the military regime to the negotiating table. In the meantime, food security programs help sustain people in their long struggle for peace and a return to their own places.
| Reviewed February 13, 2006 |  |
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