Truce or Transition? Trends in Human Rights Abuse and Local Response in Southeast Myanmar Since the 2012 Ceasefire
Publisher: Karen Human Rights Group
Date: 2014
Topics: Dispute Resolution/Mediation, Humanitarian Assistance, Peace Agreements, Programming
Countries: Myanmar
Human rights conditions have been transformed on the ground in rural Southeast Myanmar since the signing of a preliminary ceasefire agreement between the Myanmar government and the Karen National Union in January 2012. While some forms of human rights abuse documented by KHRG since 1992 remain of serious concern, others have almost disappeared. At the same time, new forms of abuse and local concerns are emerging in the evolving security environment. In this new context, there is speculation at the local level over whether the January 2012 agreement marks only a temporary truce, or a viable transition to peace and stability for local communities. Drawing on a dataset of 388 oral testimonies and pieces of documentation from a total of 1,404 collected over the past two years by villagers trained to monitor human rights conditions in their own communities, this report presents analysis of 16 categories of human rights abuse or related issues. This analysis places recent testimony in the context of 20 years of abusive practices, quantifies occurrence across KHRG’s seven research areas and identifies common perpetrators of abuse or related actors. Since the ceasefire, changes in the prevalence of human rights abuse and local responses to such abuse have not been systematically documented. Local perceptions of threats to the ceasefire process remain similarly unknown. This report therefore aims to provide an update from the ground in rural Karen areas of Southeast Myanmar that will allow local, national and international actors to base programming and policy decisions related to this post-conflict region more closely around the experiences of local people, and better support villagers by understanding their concerns and priorities.