[PDF] The Politics Of Aid To Burma eBook

Author : Anne Decobert
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 48,62 MB
Release : 2015-11-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1317517024

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For over sixty years, conflict between state forces and armed ethnic groups was ongoing in parts of the borderlands of Burma. Ethnic minority communities were subjected to systematic and widespread abuses by an increasingly complex patchwork of armed state and non-state actors. Populations in more remote and disputed border areas typically had little to no access to even basic healthcare and education services. As part of its counter-insurgency campaign, the military state also historically restricted international humanitarian access to civilian populations in unstable border areas. It was in this context that "cross-border aid" to Burma had developed, as an alternative mechanism for channelling assistance to populations denied aid through more conventional systems. Yet by the late 2000s, national and international changes had significant impacts on an aid debate, which had important political and ethical implications. Through an ethnographic study of a cross-border aid organisation working on the Thailand-Burma border, this book focuses on the political and ethical dilemmas of "humanitarian government". It explores the ways in which aid systems come to be defined as legitimate or illegitimate, humanitarian or "un-humanitarian", in an international context that has witnessed the multiplication of often-conflicting humanitarian systems and models. It examines how an "embodied history" of violence can shape the worldviews and actions of local humanitarian actors, as well as institutions created to mitigate human suffering. It goes on to look at the complex and often-invisible webs of local organisations, international NGOs, donors, armed groups and other actors, which can develop in a cross-border and extra-legal context – a context where competing constructions of systems as legitimate or illegitimate are highlighted. Exploring the history of humanitarianism from the local aid perspective of Burma, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian Studies, Anthropology of Humanitarian Aid and Development Studies.

Author :
Publisher :
Page : 84 pages
File Size : 31,57 MB
Release : 2002
Category : Humanitarian assistance
ISBN :

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On humanitarian assistance in Burma.

Author : Ashley South
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 41,9 MB
Release : 2008-06-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 113412953X

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This book examines the ideas which have structured half a century of civil war in Burma, and the roles which political elites and foreign networks - from colonial missionaries to aid worker activists - have played in mediating understandings of ethnic conflict in the country. The book includes a brief overview of precolonial and colonial Burma, and the emergence ethnic identity as a politically salient characteristic. It describes the struggle for independence and the parliamentary era (1948-62), and the quarter century of military-socialist rule that followed (1962-88). The book analyses the causes, dynamics and impacts of on-going armed conflict in Burma, since the 1988 'democracy uprising' through to the 2007 'saffron revolution' (when monks and ordinary people took to the streets in protest against the military regime). There is a special focus on the plight of displaced people, and the ways in which local and international agencies have responded. The book also examines one of the most significant, but least well-understood, political developments in Burma over the last twenty years: the series of ceasefires agreed since 1989 between the military government and most armed ethnic groups. The positive and negative impacts of the ceasefires are analysed, including a study of civil society among ethnic nationality communities. This analysis leads to a discussion of the nature of social and political change in Burma, and a re-examination of some commonly held assumptions regarding the country, including issues of ethnicity and federalism. The book concludes with a brief Epilogue, taking account of Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma on 2 and 3 May 2008, resulting in a massive humanitarian crisis.

Author : Tamas Wells
Publisher : Amsterdam University Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 39,14 MB
Release : 2021-04-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9048553792

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This book analyses what Myanmar's struggle for democracy has signified to Burmese activists and democratic leaders, and to their international allies. In doing so, it explores how understanding contested meanings of democracy helps make sense of the country's tortuous path since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won historic elections in 2015. Using Burmese and English language sources, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar reveals how the country's ongoing struggles for democracy exist not only in opposition to Burmese military elites, but also within networks of local activists and democratic leaders, and international aid workers.

Author : Anne Decobert
Publisher :
Page : 652 pages
File Size : 41,51 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Human rights
ISBN :

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Through an ethnographic study of a cross-border aid organisation, this thesis examines problems that go to the heart of the politics of humanitarian aid. At a time of significant political change in Burma, members of the Back Pack Health Worker Team had to grapple with questions that have shaped the history of humanitarianism but continue to raise complex political and ethical dilemmas. The Back Pack Health Worker Team - or Back Pack, as it is commonly known - is a Non-Government Organisation made up of indigenous medics who provide healthcare to ethnic minority communities in Burma's disputed border areas. Ten years after its creation in 1998, Back Pack had become an influential yet controversial player in the politics of aid to Burma. This thesis explores how humanitarian actors, systems and practices can at different times be defined as legitimate or illegitimate. It examines ways in which an 'embodied history' of violence can influence the worldviews and actions of humanitarian actors, as well as institutions that develop in a particular context to mitigate human suffering. Back Pack's 'humanitarian struggle' unites the provision of aid with a politico-moral vision, itself tied to the life experiences and embodied histories of state violence of its founders and members. This humanitarian struggle implies an attribution of legitimacy to some socio-political actors in Burma rather than others. For over a decade, it was endorsed by international donors and political actors. At a time of significant (geo)political change, however, international-level attributions of legitimacy to different socio-political actors in Burma shifted, with significant impacts on an already polarised and emotive politics of aid. This ethnographic study highlights the importance of analysing systems through which aid works from the perspective of values attributed to these systems by actors at different scales of analysis and in relation to wider political and geopolitical changes. It focuses on the complex and often-invisible webs of local organisations, international NGOs, donors and other socio-political actors, which can develop in a cross-border and extra-legal context - a context where competing constructions of systems as legitimate or illegitimate, humanitarian or not humanitarian are highlighted. It is in such a context and at a time of significant (geo)political change that constructions of 'licitness' can become most pertinent and that divergent and shifting attributions of value by actors at different scales become particularly significant. Finally, the thesis links this analysis to a conceptualisation of humanitarianism as an unequal 'politics of life' and 'politics of value'. It thus highlights ways in which actors differentially situated in an international system of 'humanitarian government' can be involved in contests over the attribution of value not only to human lives per se, but also to the systems and practices that enable the government of these lives.

Author : Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung
Publisher : University of Wisconsin Press
Page : 309 pages
File Size : 37,30 MB
Release : 2019-01-22
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 029932060X

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Reforms in Myanmar (formerly Burma) have eased restrictions on citizens' political activities. Yet for most Burmese, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung shows, eking out a living from day to day leaves little time for civic engagement. Citizens have coped with extreme hardship through great resourcefulness. But by making bad situations more tolerable in the short term, these coping strategies may hinder the emergence of the democratic values needed to sustain the country's transition to a more open political environment. Thawnghmung conducted in-depth interviews and surveys of 372 individuals from all walks of life and across geographical locations in Myanmar between 2008 and 2015. To frame her analysis, she provides context from countries with comparable political and economic situations. Her findings will be welcomed by political scientists and policy analysts, as well by journalists and humanitarian activists looking for substantive, reliable information about everyday life in a country that remains largely in the shadows.

Author : Anthony Ware
Publisher : ANU Press
Page : 348 pages
File Size : 21,29 MB
Release : 2023-12-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 176046614X

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The coup in Myanmar on 1 February 2021 abruptly reversed a decade-long flirtation with economic and political freedoms. The country has since descended into civil war, the people have been plunged back into conflict and poverty, and the state is again characterised by fragility and human insecurity. As the Myanmar people oppose the regime and fight for their rights, the international community must find ways to act in solidarity. There is an urgent need for new policy settings and for practical engagement with local partners and recipient groups. The contributors to After the Coup offer timely insights into ways international actors can try to reduce the suffering of millions of citizens who are again being held hostage by a brutal and self-serving regime. Chapters analyse topics including coercive statecraft, international justice, Rakhine State (Rohingya) dynamics, pandemic weaponisation, higher education, non-state welfare and aid delivery, activism from exile, self-determination and power sharing in the National Unity Government’s alternative constitution, and the roles of China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.