KWO Six Months Summary of Human Rights Violations in Karen State: January to June 2015

The Karen Women’s Organization (“KWO”) collected information regarding continuing serious human rights abuses perpetrated by the Burma Army in all seven districts in Karen State from January to June 2015. Our data demonstrates that the Burma Army has taken advantage of the preliminary ceasefire to continue to commit serious human rights abuses, perpetrate direct attacks on civilians and expand its presence in Karen State […]

MPs Urge Ban Ki-Moon to Negotiate Humanitarian Access to Rakhine State, Burma

Over 50 MPs in the British Parliament have signed an Early Day Motion (EDM) (a kind of Parliamentary petition) calling on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to personally lead negotiations for humanitarian access to Rakhine State, Burma. The MPs also call on the British Government to put pressure on the Burmese government to address the root causes of why the Rohingya are fleeing the country […]

Southeast Asia: Open Letter on the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in Southeast Asia

One month after 17 countries gathered in Bangkok to discuss the refugee and migrant crisis in South East Asia, we are writing to you to express our deep concern at the continuing lack of concrete and regionally-coordinated measures to tackle the current crisis and its long-standing root causes […]

ကခ်င္အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားအစည္းအရံုးထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ (KWAT) မွကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္း ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ ကခ်င္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္တို႔ ၏စစ္ျပန္လည္္ျဖစ္ပြားမႈ၄ႏွစ္ျပည့္ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ျပီးထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

ႏိုင္ငံတကာအဖြ႔ဲအစည္းမ်ားအေနႏွင့္တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးစုမ်ားႏွင့္စစ္မက္ျဖစ္ပြားေနမႈမ်ားရပ္တန္႕ေပးရန္ ျမန္မာအစိုးရ အေပၚဖိအားေပးသင့္ပါသည္။ […]

Statement by KWAT on the 4th Anniversary of Renewal of war in Kachin Areas

The conflict situation in northern Burma has worsened during 2015. Despite the Burmese government’s claims to be promoting peace, they have continued their military build-up in Kachin and northern Shan State, launching large-scale offensives, including aerial bombings, which are devastating ethnic communities […]

56 Solidarity Groups Worldwide Call for an Immediate Halt to All Military Offensives in Northern Burma/Myanmar and Unhindered Provision of Aid to Hundreds of Thousands of IDPs

(8 June 2015) On the fourth anniversary of the renewed war in Kachin State, 56 groups worldwide issued a statement in solidarity with the Kachin people by calling on the Burma Army to immediately halt all offensives in Kachin and northern Shan States and for the Burma/Myanmar Government to allow humanitarian agencies immediate and unhindered access to all internally displaced persons (IDPs) affected by the ongoing conflict […]

Local Youth Mark 4th Anniversary of War in Kachin State

RANGOON — On Saturday, hundreds gathered in Rangoon to commemorate four years of conflict in Kachin State, calling for additional support for some 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in camps in Burma’s far north […]

UNHCR : Plan of Action-Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea

An estimated 63,000 people are believed to have traveled by boat in an irregular and dangerous way in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea in 2014. Another 25,000 joined them in the first quarter of 2015. They are part of a complex, mixed migratory movement composed of refugees, stateless people and economic migrants. Unregulated and, until recently, inconspicuous, the scale of the movement has tripled since 2012 and the level and scale of abuse suffered by voyagers is unprecedented in recent times.

A Regional Solution to the Refugee Crisis Must Address Root Causes

On 29 May 2015, Thailand hosted the long-awaited Special Meeting on Irregular Migration to address the unfolding refugee crisis in the Andaman Sea. The talks brought together representatives from 19 nations mainly in the ASEAN region, along with delegates from the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). At the time of the meeting, the Arakan Project has reported that at least 6,000 refugees, mainly Rohingya, are unaccounted for and likely stranded at sea. Victims of discrimination and denied even basic human rights back in Burma, these individuals are risking malnourishment, dehydration, and abuse in order to escape repressed lives under the Burma Government.

As more and more refugees are rescued from the squalid conditions at sea, survivor accounts have begun to emerge. Human Rights Watch recently published accounts that detail the dangerous journey from Burma, including stories involving traffickers intentionally abusing the refugees in order to hasten ransom demands, being forced at gunpoint into departing refugee boats, and the cramped and overcrowded conditions of the boats used to transport the refugees. A 16-year-old Rohingya girl described her experience on board the refugee boat, “When I got to the big boat … I cannot explain my feeling I was so scared. We were about 16 people in one small room. The doors were always locked. The smugglers put the food and water through a small hole, we never saw them.” […]

Responding To Boat People Crisis in Southeast Asia – Special Meeting in Bangkok Must Formulate a Long-Term and Sustainable Solution

(Bangkok, 28 May 2015) – On 29th May, 17 countries will come together in Bangkok for the “Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean” hosted by the Thai Government […]