Filipino Solidarity Activists Call for Inclusion of Genuine Peace and Democratization in Burma in PH-MYA Bilateral Talks

One hundred (100) solidarity activists belonging to the Free Burma Coalition – Philippines (FBCP) today held a symbolic action in front of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to press for Burmese people’s demands in the second day of Burmese President Thein Sein’s visit to the Philippines […]

ဒုတိယအၾကိမ္ေျမာက္ ကခ်င္အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားဖိုရမ္မွ စစ္ေျပးဒုကၡသည္မ်ားႏွင့္ပတ္သက္၍ သေဘာထားထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကျငာခ်က္

ကခ်င္အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ား၏ယံုၾကည္ခ်က္သည ္ႏုိင္ငံေရးေဆြးေႏြးပြဲႏွင့္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ားေဖာ္ေဆာင္ရာတြင္အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားႏွင့္ျပည္သူလူထု အသံပါ၀င္မွ သာလွ်င္စစ္မွန္သည့္ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေဖာ္ေဆာင္ႏိုင္မည္ဟု ခုိုင္မာစြာလက္ခံထားပါသည္ […]

Cooperation Needed to End Violence Against Women of Burma

To mark 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, 27 civil society organizations have come together to launch 16 days of action that will end on 10 December, International Human Rights Day. The campaign began with a public ceremony in Rangoon on 24 November that included games, music and other performances. Women’s groups called for cooperation from all people of Burma to help end all forms of violence against women by participating in a “white campaign”, wearing white shirts or accessories during the 16 days to raise awareness about the problem of violence against women.

In a Burmese-language statement, the Women’s League of Burma called for the people of Burma to work together to reduce the role of the military in the governance of the country and achieve sustainable peace. The statement outlined the many different forms of violence that women face on a daily basis: physical, mental, sexual, domestic and community violence, as well as violence carried out by the Burma Army, especially in ethnic nationality areas […]

Call to End the War Against Civilians in the Kachin Region of Burma

Today, members of the Kachin community living in the United States held a demonstration to demand an end of the war against civilians in the Kachin region of Burma in front of the Myanmar Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Since the war escalated in the Kachin region, civilians have endured mass atrocities and abuses by the Burma Army […]

Poverty, Displacement and Local Governance in South East Burma/Myanmar

As the pace of reform has slowed in Burma/Myanmar during 2013, the potential for an inclusive political dialogue process to address the causes of conflict has increased. The sustainability of national reconciliation will require sensitivity to the concerns and aspirations of ethnic nationality communities in relation to identity, security and justice. This village-level survey describes the challenge of addressing chronic poverty, protracted displacement and weak governance at the community level in South East Myanmar as part of the conflict transformation process […]

Myanmar Peace Process Must Address Protection Concerns: NGO Report

Village Survey in Myanmar identifies challenges for poverty alleviation, displaced persons and local governance

The Border Consortium (TBC), an NGO that works with the displaced and conflict-affected people of Myanmar, today released findings from its annual survey which describe chronic poverty, protracted displacement and weak governance as the starting point for conflict transformation. Eleven civil society organisations in South East Myanmar collaborated with TBC to conduct the survey in 209 villages spread across 6 states and regions […]

Villagers Confined After Burma Army Shelling of Shan Ceasefire Group Near Thai Border

Ethnic Padaung villagers of Ho Ha, in Ho Mong township, southern Shan State, were confined in their village for three days after Burmese Army soldiers attacked the nearby base of a Shan ceasefire group earlier this week.

On October 26, 2013, about 30 Burmese troops from Light Infantry Battalion 287, led by Major Min Zaw Lin, fired 60 mm mortar shells at Tab Kawng Hsarng, a base of the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S) […]

Economics of Peace and Conflict

This report aims to clarify the complex processes of solving economic grievances related to the peace process. Examining how these efforts work and how the different actors, policies and projects make up a larger framework may help in assessing how well they respond to the roots of conflict. It especially tries to understand how the many different ministries, committees, international donors, CBOs, businesses (domestic and foreign) and NSAGs work together, overlap, or contradict each other in achieving economic and development goals for national peace […]

Sexual Violence in Burma ‘Deeply Troubling’ Says UK Foreign Secretary William Hague

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has said in a letter to Burma Campaign UK that the British government; ‘continue to receive deeply troubling reports of the use of sexual violence in Burma’s conflict zones’.

The letter was in response to thousands of letters and campaign postcards calling for action to end rape and sexual violence in Burma, which were delivered to the Foreign Office on 12th September 2013 […]

Burmese Army Attack and Loot Kachin IDP Camp

On the morning of Tuesday 22nd October, the Burmese Army launched an offensive at Namlim Pa and Mung Ding Pa village tracts in Mansi Township, Southern Kachin State. This happened after the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) re-positioned to re-open the Kaihtik-Bhamo motorway […]