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A Commentary by TNI on the Right to Land of People Displaced by War and Militarization
26 August 2019
“In Myanmar, people are suffering from the fighting, while the government is also trying to manipulate and divide the displaced people. Some people go back, some remain in the IDP camps. It’s like a hell in the country.”
(Internally Displaced Person (IDP) meeting, 13 August 2019, Myitkyina)
This is how one IDP, displaced since 2011, recently described the current situation in the north of the country. In both the north and the east of Myanmar, displaced people have been suffering layer upon layer of injustice over the past decades. Today the situation is as bad as ever. Ongoing conflict, militarization and business-oriented mega-projects continue to drive fresh displacements, while keeping those displaced previously from returning to their homes, farms, forests and villages.
Amidst growing pressures on local communities and their lands, the Border Consortium and Transnational Institute have been helping displaced people (mainly IDPs and refugees from armed conflict) and the frontline organisations that support them to come together to build advocacy to defend and claim their right to land. Since 2016 several joint meetings have been organised, in Yangon and in Myitkyina, bringing together IDPs and refugees from five nationality states – Kachin, Shan, Kayah (Karenni), Karen and Mon – to share their experiences and aspirations, to analyse these according to human rights principles, conventions and agreements, and to build a joint position on their right to land.
Recently, displaced people from the five states decided to make a joint position paper (English and Burmese) and launch it at a public event in Yangon. The group held separate briefings with the LIFT Fund Board and with the United Nationalities Alliance (UNA) of political parties before holding a public event to introduce their joint position paper. At each event, a panel of speakers shared the trauma of displacement and the struggle for peace, recognition and justice, with five different people speaking each time from the five different areas.
More than 130 people attended the public event at the Summit Park View Hotel in Yangon, coming from various embassies, UN agencies, international non-governmental organisations, political parties, civil society groups and the media. This public event demonstrated the extraordinary situation of displaced people: ordinary people who have been victimized by war and land-grabbing, trying to make good from destitute situations that are not of their own making but which they find themselves in nonetheless.
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