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Briefing Paper 
 April 2009
Food crisis: The cumulative impact of abuse in rural Burma
Systematic militarisation and widespread exploitation of the civilian population by military forces have created poverty, malnutrition and a severe food crisis in KarenState and other parts of rural Burma. This crisis requires urgent attention by theinternational community  with intervention shaped by the concerns of villagersthemselves. This briefer outlines the human rights abuses which have caused thefood crisis; the combined impacts of these abuses upon civilian communities; theways in which villagers have responded to and resisted abuse; and the actions that can be taken by the international community to alleviate the current crisis and toprevent future cycles of abuse and malnutrition in rural Burma.
Rural villagers in Karen State are currently facing afood crisis, as a direct result of human rights abusesinflicted upon them primarily by the State Peace andDevelopment Council (SPDC), the military juntacurrently ruling Burma, and its allied armed groups.Villagers face not only the day-to-day abusescommensurate with the SPDCs militarisationcampaign, but also the long-term combined impacts of those abuses. However, there has been a glaringlack of attention on this issue by the internationalmedia.This briefer considers the widespread andsustained human rights abuses at the root of thiscrisis, the compounding consequences of theseabuses and the ways in which villagers haveattempted to resist abuse, maintain their livelihoodsand survive despite the food crisis. Recognising thestrategies that villagers are already using to addressfood insecurity, the briefer gives recommendations tothe international community on actions that can betaken to alleviate the current crisis and prevent futureabuse and malnutrition in rural Burma.It is the compounding nature of systematic civilianexploitation and regular human rights abuses,combined with the absence of State social services or welfare provisions, which has served to so severelyundermine the humanitarian situation of rural
Forcibly relocated children in the plains of Nyaunglebin Districtwork tending paddy fields to help their families cope with foodinsecurity.
[Photo: KHRG] 
 
This briefing paper draws upon numerous Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG) human rights reports, in order to highlight the current food crisis in KarenState and other areas of rural Burma that has developed as a result of human rights abuses inflicted upon civilians by the military. All of KHRGs regular news bulletins, field reports and photo gallery updates, as well as more detailed thematic and regional reports, are available online at
www.khrg.org
.Printed copies of reports may be obtained, subject to availability, by sending a request to
khrg@khrg.org
.
 
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communities in Karen State. In areas under SPDCcontrol, villagers traditional livelihood activities andmeans of producing and purchasing food are beingincreasingly eroded over time under the combinedburden of military demands for labour, food, money,land and other resources:
·
Regular forced labour cuts into time needed for agriculture or other work;
·
Extortion and looting of food and livestock bypatrolling military units undermines villagers ownnutrition and household needs;
·
Paddy and other crop quotas force villagers tohand over significant portions of their crop yieldsto procurement officers, meaning a loss of potential revenue as well as directly reducingcommunity food supplies;
·
Arbitrary taxation and demands for moneydeplete villagers limited savings, weakening their ability to purchase food from neighbouring towns;
·
Land confiscation for so-called developmentprojects, such as the building of roads and dams,leaves villagers with decreased land on which togrow their crops;
·
Forced agricultural projects require that villagersreplace traditional food crops with non-ediblecrops, such as castor bean (used to create bio-fuel) or rubber;
·
Forced relocation places villagers in fencedcompounds, in barren plain lands, with small plotsof land which are insufficient for meeting afamilys food provision needs;
·
Finally, restrictions on movement, employed tomore efficiently control the population, limit opportunities for trade and work outside of villageconfines and prevent villagers from evading thedemands imposed upon them.Any one of the above military demands taken aloneundermines the ability of civilian communities toaddress nutritional needs. However, when experiencedin combination over a sustained period of time, villagersoptions for managing even their basic subsistenceneeds become highly constrained. In order to meet the combined financial requirements of militarydemands and household subsistence, and with limitedlocal employment options in a cash economy, villagersare frequently pushed towards selling off personalpossessions and/or incurring debt. The consequent increase in rural poverty (in terms of diminished fiscalliquidity; loss of personal possessions and foodsupplies; and loss of access to a means of production,as agricultural land is sold off to pay, or avoid takingon, debts) has created a pervasive food crisis in ruralSPDC-controlled Karen State.
Only two villagers out of ten have enoughrice. They 
re borrowing from each other just to stay alive. During the dry season, they goto other villages to look for work and try tosave food for the rainy season. Most of thevillagers are doing this. [But] from the timewe finish with the [seasonal] farm work, we
reordered to repair four furlongs [approx. 800 meters] of the Lay Gkay car road Somevillagers have become weaker becausethey 
ve had to do a lot of forced labour. 
- Saw P--- (male, 68), S--- village, Thaton District (May 2008)
In areas outside of SPDC control, the SPDC employsa variety of measures to prevent the distribution of crucial food supplies to hiding villagers in order toundermine civilian efforts to evade military control.Well aware of the abuses and livelihood restrictionsthey will face under military control (as describedabove), villagers actively avoid SPDC attempts toforce them into relocation sites or military-controlledvillages and instead flee into the forested mountainsin advance of approaching military units.Although villagers generally prioritise foodsupplies and cooking equipment when they flee intohiding, they are limited as to the amount they are ableto carry and, therefore, must return home to collect further supplies or access alternative food sourceswithin several weeks of displacement. However, asvillagers flee, soldiers regularly fire mortar rockets intovillages and then enter the villages in order to torchhomes, food storage barns and fields, kill livestockand destroy agricultural and cooking equipment often leaving villagers with little left to salvage. Evenso, soldiers also plant landmines around villagershomes, community buildings and fields in order toprevent villagers from returning. Furthermore, hidingvillagers are deemed enemies of the state andsoldiers are issued a shoot-on-sight policy for anycivilians encountered in areas outside of consolidatedmilitary control, making it even more dangerous for villagers to leave their hiding sites and return toharvest remaining crops or collect hidden foodsupplies.Even though many villagers remain close to their home areas and often return after the troops havedeparted, this pattern of attack and displacement disrupts traditional planting and harvesting cycles,leading to failed or much reduced harvests.Moreover, crops left behind during displacement areoften overtaken by weeds or destroyed by wild
 
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animals and insects, while livestock  particularlybuffalos used to plough and harvest fields  are killedwhen they trigger landmines laid by SPDC soldiers.In addition to the destruction of abandoned foodsupplies and agricultural fields and the measuresemployed to prevent villagers from being able toreturn, movement restrictions upon those under SPDC control effectively prevent hiding villagers frombeing able to access food supplies elsewhere.Fences around villages, strict rules on villager movement, road blocks and the SPDCs shoot-on-sight policy all work to prevent trade betweencontrolled and non-controlled communities. Together,these measures diminish flows of crucial foodsupplies into non-SPDC-controlled areas  a result intended by a military force that hopes to starvevillagers out of the hills and into SPDC-controlledareas in the plains.
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Poverty, malnutrition and the dire food crisis in theregion are the direct consequence of systematicmilitary predation in rural Karen State  a patternwhich is repeated across much of rural Burma.
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Reduced harvests resulting from excessive militarydemands, the extortion and destruction of food stocks,and restrictions upon the movement of food, amongst other abuses, leave villagers with insufficient foodsupplies and a lack of diversity in their diets. Theglobal economic crisis, climate change and risingworld food prices only add to the difficulties villagersare already facing in providing enough food for their families. The consequent malnutrition of a largeportion of the rural population has far-reaching social,economic and political implications both within andbeyond Burmas borders. Malnutrition makes villagersmore susceptible to illness and disease. At the sametime, living hand-to-mouth leaves communities without the necessary savings to purchase medicines or foodstockpiles to fall back upon whilst caring for the sick or injured, creating a deplorable health situation.Meanwhile, families already struggling to meet their nutritional needs are unable to send their children toschool and are instead often forced to put their children to work for the familys livelihood or to meet military demands, undermining education and childdevelopment. Combined with the food crisis itself,these factors create large-scale internal displacement and refugee and migrant worker flows intoneighbouring countries.However, in highlighting this food crisis, it isimportant to note that villagers in rural Burma are not  just helpless victims. Rather, they are activelyresisting abuse and are constantly developing andhoning strategies to address their nutritional needs.These strategies are surveyed towards the end of thisreport. Nevertheless, without external support for these strategies, the food crisis will continue toconstrain villagers abilities to evade SPDC control,resist abuse and address other social and economicneeds.The food crisis in rural Burma has beenacknowledged by both the World Food Program andFood and Agricultural Organisation of the UnitedNations and necessitates urgent action by theinternational community.
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Given the efforts of localcommunities to address food security issuesthemselves, all such action must be conducted in amanner supportive of the strategies that villagers inrural Burma are already using to resist abuse. Thus,the international communitys response to the crisismust be informed and shaped by the concerns of ruralvillagers themselves. The imperative to act isunderpinned by the internationally-recognised right tofood. As explained by Jean Ziegler, former UNSpecial Rapporteur on the Right to Food,
The right to food means that Governmentsmust not take actions that result in increasinglevels of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition... The right to food is a humanright and is a binding obligation well-established under international law,recognised in the Universal Declaration onHuman Rights. 
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For information on the food crisis in western Burma,see Chin Human Rights Organization, July 2008,
Critical  Point: Food Scarcity and Hunger in Burmas ChinState;
and Human Rights Watch, January 2009, 
We Are Like Forgotten People The Chin People of Burma:Unsafe in Burma, Unprotected in India.
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The Irrawaddy
, January 28
th
2009, UN: Burma FacesFood Crisis. Accessed atwww.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15018 on April2
nd
2009;UNOCHA  IRIN, April 1
st
2009, Myanmar: Rohingya face rising food insecurity. Accessed athttp://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83733on April 3
rd
2009.
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 Right to Food 
, What is the right to food? Accessed:www.righttofood.org/new/html/WhatRighttofood.htmlon April 2
nd
2009.
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