Refugees in Their Own Lands
Refugees from Shan State, Burma
Maria is a member of the Motilón Barí people. Her community has lived for thousands of years on the same land - with the same trees, animals and clear blue rivers that flow from the highlands of Colombia to the lowlands of Venezuela. But Maria lives on land that many people want. The Colombian government thinks there is oil on her land and has sent the national oil company to look for it. Since her proximity to the border is strategic for drug smuggling, paramilitary druglords have sent people to occupy her land and to plant coca. Maria and her community live every day with the risk of being forced to leave - joining the growing number of internally displaced people in the country.
Throughout Colombia, the brutal violence of a war where armed groups fight to control territory and resources has forced over three million Colombians to flee to protect their lives. A few are able to cross the borders to neighbouring countries, but of these, only a small number are recognized as refugees. The vast majority never make it to another country and end up poor and unemployed in urban slums - dehumanized numbers in the growing statistics of internally displaced people.
On the other side of the world, the military dictatorship in Burma uses murder, torture and systematic rape to control the country's resources and its own population. The construction of pipelines and mining projects has been accompanied by forced relocation, forced labour and summary executions. Faced with the regime's campaign of terror, millions have fled to Thailand and neighbouring countries, while between one and two million have remained in Burma as internally displaced people, facing the same hardships as the refugees who crossed the border. Forced by violence to flee to remote regions within the country, they are refugees in their own land.
Around the world, more than 25 million people are displaced within their own countries. Under international humanitarian law, governments are bound by a set of principles that provide dignity and rights for all internally displaced people. In Colombia, government officials claim that rural people have merely moved to the cities to find work - a "natural" phenomenon of migration. The forcibly displaced are reclassified as economic migrants and the problem is made invisible. In Burma too, the government denies the existence of internally displaced people. By denying the category, they are denying the problem.
Inter Pares has worked with border-based organizations to support refugees from Burma since 1991. Separated from friends and family in Burma, refugees in Thailand still maintain their connection with those that stayed behind. For over fifteen years Inter Pares has supported teams of "backpack" health workers, assisting internally displaced people to resolve urgent health needs. Though uprooted, the internally displaced are rebuilding their community. In the slums of Bucaramanga in Colombia, Inter Pares assists associations of the internally displaced to demand access to the education and healthcare that the government grants them on paper but denies them in practice. Having lost so much, they are creating new lives, rebuilding community in a new place.
And Maria? She is still on her land. With the assistance of Inter Pares counterparts - the Luis Carlos Pérez Lawyers Collective and the Project Counselling Service - Maria and her community have developed strategies to defend their land, strengthen their community, and resist being displaced.
In addition to the generous support of our donors, Inter Pares gratefully acknowledges the support and assistance of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union Humanity Fund, the Steelworkers Union Humanity Fund, and Just Golf for this work.
| Reviewed May 17, 2006 |  |
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