Forced Displacements and Destroyed Lives Around Upper Paunglaung
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Physicians for Forced Displacements Human Rights and Destroyed Lives around Upper October 2015 Paunglaung Dam in Shan State, Myanmar About Physicians for Acknowledgments Human Rights This report was written by Widney Brown, JD, PHR director of programs. For nearly 30 years, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has used science and medicine to document and call This report has benefited from review by PHR leadership attention to mass atrocities and severe human rights and staff, including Donna McKay, executive director; violations. DeDe Dunevant, director of communications; and Eliza B. Young, MA, publications coordinator. PHR is a global organization founded on the idea that health professionals, with their specialized skills, ethical This report benefitted from external review by Michele duties, and credible voices, are uniquely positioned to Heisler, MD, MPA, PHR volunteer medical advisor, PHR stop human rights violations. board member, professor of internal medicine and of health behavior and health education at the University of PHR’s investigations and expertise are used to advocate Michigan Medical School; and Adam Richards, MD, PhD, for persecuted health workers and medical facilities MPH, PHR board member, assistant professor in the under attack, prevent torture, document mass atrocities, Division of General Internal Medicine and Health and hold those who violate human rights accountable. Services Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. Eliza B. Young, MA, PHR publications coordinator, edited and prepared this report for publication. PHR interns Shilpa Venigandla and Trip Eggert assisted in the report’s production. Staff from Lands in Our Hands, New Kayan Generation Youth, and six other civil society groups contributed to the study design and data collection and also reviewed and edited the report. Aung Myo Hein, MA, Sandar Cho Oo, and April Kyu Kyu, MA contributed to study design and supervised research activities. PHR is deeply indebted to displaced persons who were willing to share their experiences with us. The survey for this report was approved by PHR’s ethical review board. Support for the survey and report was provided by the National Endowment for Democracy. Cover: A woman displaced by the reservoir created by Paunglaung dam stands near the foundation of her old house. ©2015 Physicians for Human Rights All rights reserved. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948975 ISBN 1879707799 phr.org Forced Displacements and Destroyed Lives around 2 Upper Paunglaung Dam in Shan State, Myanmar Table of Contents 4 Introduction 5 Methods & Limitations 7 Background 9 International Guidelines on Forced Evictions 11 Results & Discussion 12 Land ownership documentation is flawed 16 Conclusion 17 Recommendations 18 Tables 19 Graphs 22 Endnotes phr.org Forced Displacements and Destroyed Lives around 3 Upper Paunglaung Dam in Shan State, Myanmar Human rights, land, livelihoods, and health are Introduction linked in Myanmar For nearly four decades, Myanmar (also known as Human rights violations – such as forced labor, Burma) was ruled by military-led governments that restrictions on movement, and particularly the unlawful committed grave human rights violations, resulting in seizure of land – affect families’ ability to provide for international economic sanctions against the country for themselves and avoid poverty. In particular, the loss of many years.1 Beginning in 2012, however, after the property for many people in Myanmar – who rely on liberalization of some governmental policies, Western land for food, income, and ultimately survival – can nations lifted these sanctions. In an effort to gain cause extreme hardship. According to a 2011 United ground on countries like China and India that had Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report, 66 maintained economic ties with Myanmar during the time percent of Myanmar’ population live in rural areas, with of the sanctions, a number of states – including half working in hunting, agriculture, or fishing. The Australia, Canada, Japan, the United States, and many United Nations Population Fund reported in 2011 that European countries – increased development aid and families with larger farms tended to be less allowed their businesses to operate in Myanmar for the impoverished in Myanmar, and that landlessness was first time in decades. correlated with poverty in the country. People who are not farmers but have access to land often use gardening This investment has been touted as a way to improve to supplement their incomes and food supply. As a key economic conditions for the people of Myanmar, one of component in food and income production, access to the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, following years land is closely linked to livelihoods and food security.3 of government mismanagement, corruption, and economic sanctions that destroyed the country’s When the government seizes land without ensuring economy.2 While the opening in Myanmar has allowed substantive due process and procedural protections, the foreign investment to soar and made new capital impacts on affected populations can be even more available for plantations, logging, special economic devastating. In order to assess the consequences of zones, deep sea ports, hydroelectric dams, and mining unlawful seizures, PHR measured food security, concessions, all of these types of projects have been livelihoods, and access to health as impacts of land loss, associated with unlawful land confiscations from since previous studies in Myanmar and elsewhere individuals and communities with little or no suggest that these are all closely linked. In Myanmar, compensation. land confiscations can trigger a chain reaction of consequences that contribute to poor health and even Economic development projects in Myanmar are causing death. widespread displacement and are having devastating impacts on those communities living in project "Today, poverty prevails as the gravest human rights locations, including human rights violations and adverse challenge in the world." Louise Arbour, former UN effects on livelihoods, food security, and health. For High Commissioner for Human Rights and a former those subjected to unlawful evictions and land grabs, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal the consequences are dire, driving many people into Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda poverty. Government policy has encouraged the development of these projects, and weak and unclear Forced displacement constitutes a human rights land policies, including some new land laws written to violation when international standards on evictions are support investment and economic growth, have not followed. Moreover, this initial rights abuse often provided the government, military, and businesses with leads to subsequent violations, such as restrictions on legal cover to confiscate people’s land without a the right to food, adequate housing, health, and transparent process for determining and awarding education, and has the potential to drive people into compensation. poverty. Poverty is the lack of basic human, economic, political, socio-cultural, and protective capabilities that In the following report, Physicians for Human Rights are required for living a life with dignity.4 In particular, (PHR) builds on its previous research on land poverty can lead to poor health, as it often is correlated confiscations in Myanmar by using an epidemiological with low vaccination rates, poor water and sanitation, survey tool to assess the human rights, livelihood, and lack of access to medicines, and increased maternal health impacts on communities displaced by the mortality and malnutrition, among other health effects.5 reservoir created by Paunglaung dam in southern Shan state. phr.org Forced Displacements and Destroyed Lives around 4 Upper Paunglaung Dam in Shan State, Myanmar Malnutrition is an underlying cause of over 50 percent of child deaths globally because it limits a child’s ability Methods and Limitations to fight the effects of illnesses such as measles, diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria, which are main The purpose of this research was to determine if human causes of child mortality.6 rights were violated during the displacement process for the creation of the reservoir at Paunglaung dam in When human rights are violated by unlawful land southern Shan state, and – if so – to measure the confiscations in Myanmar, affected people often lose impacts of these violations on the displaced population. their land and their ability to earn a living. They PHR developed an epidemiological survey tool consequently may be left without the ability to grow or consisting of several modules that can be used to buy enough food for their family, leading to declines in assess if the eviction process followed the two major food security and increases in poverty levels and risk of international legal frameworks relating to evictions and disease. Without sufficient income, many may be unable displacements – the Guiding Principles on Internally to travel to or pay for medical services when illnesses Displaced Persons (Guiding Principles) and the Basic arise. Indicators related to livelihoods and food security Principles and Guidelines on Development-based can demonstrate the secondary effects and longer-term Evictions and Displacement (Basic Principles and impacts of displacement and call attention to the harm Guidelines) – and to measure the impacts of the inflicted when evictions do not conform to international displacement on livelihoods, food