2007 Myanmar/Burma Update Conference
Australian National University, Canberra
Monday 10-Tuesday 11 December 2007
Political Update
Paper 1: 'The recent events in Myanmar: domestic and international implications'
Richard Horsey, Independent Consultant, Bangkok
In the second half of September 2007, events in Myanmar exploded onto television screens around the world. The pictures--first showing ordered columns of orange-robed monks marching through the streets of Rangoon, then showing the brutal response by security forces--generated surprise and shock. The events took place while the United Nations General Assembly was meeting in New York, amplifying their international political impact.
Everyone seemed surprised by the sudden involvement of the monks, and the speed with which the demonstrations gathered pace. In particular, the regime itself appeared to be taken by surprise. Then, once the demonstrations had been effectively put down, there was a sense that this had been a watershed moment, and that the situation in Myanmar could never be quite the same. In the words of the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, "a return to the status quo ante is unsustainable".
In part 1, this paper explores the origin of the demonstrations, in particular the fuel-price protests of August 2007, in an attempt to understand the events that ultimately led to the large-scale demonstrations in September. It investigates why it was that the recent increase in fuel costs gave rise to persistent (if small-scale) demonstrations, when even sharper fuel price increases in 2005 prompted no public reaction.
In part 2, the paper then looks at how the September demonstrations by the monks evolved, and at the nature of the response of the security forces. It discusses the reasons why the monks took to the streets in such large numbers, and what the domestic impact of the regime's violent response is likely to be. It argues that these events have significantly changed the political landscape for the regime, and provides an analysis of what their reaction has been. It then discusses whether a return to the status quo ante is inconceivable, and whether it would indeed be unsustainable.
Paper 2: Internal Dynamics of the Burmese Military: Before, During and After the Recent Demonstrations
Win Min, Independent Researcher, Chiangmai
Since the military takeover in 1962, the internal dynamics in the Burmese military, which is not monolithic, have greatly affected the way successive regimes have organized themselves and operated. Top military leaders have devised their ideas, built up their power bases and purged rival factions in order to maintain their hard-line approaches and their hold on power. The purge of the more pragmatic Gen. Khin Nyunt in 2004 by hardliners led by Gen. Than Shwe has resulted in a more restricted role for the international community in promoting a gradual democratic change and in reducing socio-economic problems. At the same time, the dismantling of Khin Nyunt's military intelligence faction allowed some opportunities for secret networking by activists and for anti-corruption efforts by a faction in the military. More recently, because of the top leaders' economic mismanagement and the dire impacts on the general population, thousands of people took to the streets in August and September.
Although the junta used violence to crack down on the peaceful demonstrations, there have been signs of different opinions among the higher-ranking military officers regarding the degree of force used against the unarmed civilians, and especially against the revered monks. Gen. Than Shwe has apparently refused to recognize the people's inability to meet their daily needs, the main underlying cause of the recent demonstrations, but there are other generals who realize seriousness of the problems and have been calling for urgent action. Responding to internal and international calls to tackle the current crisis, Gen. Than Shwe announced that talks would be held with the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, however he is determined to not make any substantive compromises. If a more pragmatic general were to take control, since the top leaders are aging and relatively unhealthy, there is hope that the international and domestic calls for a gradual and steady change to democracy could bear fruit.
Economic Update
Paper 1: GDP growth and investment in Myanmar: a historical perspective
Independent Economic consultant, Yangon
Many observers, both within the country and abroad, have expressed reservations on Myanmar's official growth rates. Myanmar has two choices, continue to stick with exceptionally high and unbelievable real GDP growth rates and the associated embarrassingly poor social and economic indicators; or revise real GDP growth rates to more realistic, accurate and reasonable levels and have less embarrassing social and economic indicators.
The first option has been counterproductive for Myanmar. The good image that high growth rates are expected to convey has proved elusive. They are largely ignored and are probably thought not fit to be printed so do not appear in the major regional and world statistical publications. On the other hand, the embarrassing social and economic indicators they generate get publicity, talked about, highlighted, and published.
It is time to move to another option to achieve improvement in quality, accuracy, creditability, reliability, timeliness and availability of economic and social statistical data and information will be an essential first step in building a modern developed nation. Otherwise Myanmar will continue "navigating in the fog".
Paper 2: Migrant Worker Remittances and Burma: An Economic Analysis of Survey Results
Sean Turnell, Alison Vicary, and Wylie Bradford, Macquarie University
In recent years great interest has awakened in the question of migrant remittances. A phenomenon hitherto regarded as of little consequence, the potential for remittances to act as a means for poverty alleviation and economic development has increasingly come to enjoy a broad consensus. In the light of this, and the recognition that for many developing countries remittances constitute a larger and more stable source of foreign exchange than either trade, investment or aid, a vast and growing literature on the topic has emerged. However, and notwithstanding this broad interest, there is yet to appear any major study with respect to the question of migrant remittances to Burma.
This paper seeks to at least partially redress this void by examining the extent, nature and pattern of remittances made by Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. Drawing upon a survey of such workers conducted by the authors, we find that remittances to Burma are large, disproportionately used to ensure simple survival, and are overwhelmingly realised via informal mechanisms. The latter attributes are a direct consequence of Burma's dysfunctional economy, which sadly also severely limits the gains to the country that remittances might otherwise bring.
Paper 3: Myanmar's Economic Relations with China: Who Benefits and Who Pays?
Toshihiro Kudo, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan
Following the recent political event, Myanmar-China relations attract international attentions. Some criticize that China support the military government with enhanced trade and economic assistance and insist that China shall be more responsible for Myanmar's delayed democratization and poor human rights records. It is true that Myanmar-China relations, economic ones in particular, are critically important for the survival of the military government as well as Myanmar economy.
Since the military took power in 1988 and adopted an open-door policy, the trade between the two countries dramatically increased. China is now a major supplier of consumer and capital goods to Myanmar, in particular through the cross-border trade. China also provides a large amount of economic cooperation in the areas of infrastructure, energy and state-owned economic enterprises.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the development and changes of Myanmar-China economic relations since 1988, and to evaluate their impacts on the Myanmar economy from various actors' viewpoints. For example, the rapid inflow of cheap Chinese consumer goods and durables may be beneficial for the people's daily life. However, it may have damaged the burgeoning domestic industries. Who benefits and who pays for costs? China's economic assistance and commercial loans made the Myanmar government possible to accelerate the construction of new state-owned factories. However, many economists predict that the newly built state-owned factories would not efficiently operate due to rent-seeking activities and lack of governance, eventually resulting in bad debts. Who pays for the debts in the future? China's purchase of Myanmar's natural resources such as gas, hardwoods, minerals and gems will bring the military government a significant amount of cash. However, "resource curse" is often the case in developing countries. After all, can the Myanmar economy survive and/or grow with reinforced economic ties with China in spite of its isolation in the international community? These are the research questions this paper addresses.
In conclusion, Myanmar's trade with China has failed to have a substantial impact on its broad-based economic and industrial development, although Chinese supplies improved people's daily life to a certain extent. China's economic cooperation apparently supports the present regime, but its effects on the whole economy will be limited with an unfavorable macroeconomic environment and distorted incentives structure. All in all, strengthened economic ties with China will be instrumental in regime survival, but will not be a powerful force affecting the process of economic development in Myanmar.
Education Update
Paper 1: Education in Burma: Opportunity for limited engagement
Richard Martin
Sanctions and censure imposed upon Burma by current western regimes, with the intention of encouraging an emergent civil society and development of democratic institutions, have failed. There is a strong view in the west that current policies will remain intact until Aung Sung Suu Kyi is released from house arrest and the Burmese military allow free elections. There is the other view that any new international approach must address the issues associated with this transition as Burma is one of the poorest, most ethnically diverse and conflict prone societies in South East Asia. Additional viewpoints suggest that new international policies should support encouragement of political liberalization, peace building and socio economic development; that the status quo approach of coercive diplomacy should be replaced with a policy of improving communication with the military regime which is paranoid and lack any coherent thinking.
The focus of this short report is aimed at the education sector and suggests that in the absence of any immediate change to the formal sector there are other avenues that can be pursued to improving the plight of young people wishing to gain an education, improve their skills and get meaningful work. It is not a comprehensive analysis of the education system in Burma, rather, it focuses on areas where the writer believes that considerable opportunities exist to develop links, provide small but meaningful projects funded by philanthropic or private organizations in the west in the same way that Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have benefited from over the past 20 to 30 years. If small, privately funded development assistance money is funneled into Burma, then perhaps official development assistance may again emanate from multi lateral organizations such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank as they may review their existing policies of non engagement. A number of NGOs and the European Commission already operate successfully in Burma with the reluctant and tacit approval of the Burmese government; however their influence is limited due to lack of funding and poor coordination. An attempt should be made to correct this shortcoming.
It is recommended that philanthropic or private organizations in the west should review the situation and with cooperation with the small but growing private sector in Burma forge partnerships in the areas of English language teaching, skills development, trades, and then also seriously consider training students in the tourism sector where there are only a few restrictions currently in place by the Burmese Government. As in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, education and training assistance in the tourism sector is seen as non-controversial, from the Government's point of view: this is a golden opportunity for the west to influence and assist in opening up a country which has been intellectually, economically and morally in decline since the advent of the current military regime.
Paper 2: Education in Myanmar: the interplay of state, civil society and business
Marie Lall, Institute of Education, London
At independence Burma had the highest literacy rate in its own language across the former British Empire. For many years the level of education was one of the highest in Asia, prompting other Asian countries to see Burma as an example. However decades of underinvestment and civil strife resulted in the slow and steady decay of the state education system across the country. Despite the fact that school buildings continued to be built both in the cities and in the villages, teacher education and pay deteriorated markedly during the socialist era. The system has never recovered and today Myanmar/Burma is facing an education crisis both in the cities, the rural and the tribal areas.
In many areas monastic schools have increasingly come to underpin the state education system for the very poor. In tribal areas such as Kachin state church organisations have played a similar, if slightly different role. However with the advent of a small but increasingly affluent middle class parents search for a third way to educate their children. Whilst many of the very rich have sent their children to international/diplomatic schools or abroad, the middle classes do not have the means to follow suit. Consequently a large number of unofficial schools in the private sector have sprung up teaching principally English and it, but often other subjects as well. The cities, but Yangon in particular is experiencing and increased development of edu-business. The paper will discuss how the new private sector schools are carving out a new space between state education and civil society organisations.
This paper will discuss the interplay of the state and private sector and how these are creating a new dynamic in the education world of Myanmar. It will do so in the context of increased privatisation in developing countries, arguing however that in Myanmar the increased private sector involvement is not 'used' by the state to reduce state education. The paper will also discuss the effects of such private involvement, which as elsewhere are increasing the divide between the emerging middle class and the broader and poorer population who have no alternative besides the state system. The paper will focus primarily on Yangon, but also draw on fieldwork in Myikyna, Kachin state as well as drawing on observations in Mandalay and other areas across the country.
Paper 3: The Emergence of Civil Society in Areas of State Weakness: The Case of Education in Burma
Jasmin Lorch, PhD candidate Albert-Ludwigs-University, Freiburg
Civil society groups are among the most important private actors to fill some of the gaps that exist in Burma's education system. As the state-run education system deteriorates, civil society actors develop alternative and mostly informal approaches to teaching and the provision of education materials. Even though the military regime is highly authoritarian, spaces for civil society actors do exist within two areas of state weakness: firstly, within various sectors of the weak welfare state; and secondly, within some of the spaces of relative ethnic autonomy in ceasefire areas. Against this backdrop, the emergence of self-help groups in the education sector provides but one specific example of a larger trend: The military regime has started to tolerate civil society activities in areas of tremendous welfare needs that the government is unable or unwilling to tackle itself.
In principle, the sector of education can be seen as constituting a particularly attractive field of (possible future) engagement for international aid organisations. Several Burma experts assume that if it was possible for the international aid community to engage with civil society actors in the field of education this could be a starting point for gradually changing the country's authoritarian political culture. At first glance the popular demonstrations that took place in Rangoon this summer seem to support the assumption that civil society groups in Burma in general and those in the field of education in particular can still play a political role. Young monks who were living and being taught at monastic - and thus civil-society-based - education centres in Rangoon were in the forefront of an uprising that expressed the grievances of the Burmese population at large.
Against this backdrop, the paper focuses on three questions: Firstly, do civil-society-based activities provide a viable alternative to the failing state-run education system; in other words, do they constitute a functional substitute of the state in the field of education? Secondly, do civil society initiatives in the education sector have any political potential? And thirdly, which role can the international aid community play in strengthening the capacities of civil society actors to deliver educational - i.e. welfare - services on the one hand and in helping them develop their social and political reform potential on the other. To answer these questions, the paper will first provide an overview of the multifaceted spectrum of civil society initiatives in the field of education in both government-controlled and ceasefire areas. In a second step these civil society groups will be analysed firstly, in terms of their role in providing educational services vis à vis that of the state, secondly, in terms of their political potential and, last but not least, in terms of their relationships with international organisations.
Health Update
Paper 1: Contemporary Medical Pluralism in Burma
Monique Skidmore, Centre for Cross Cultural Research, ANU
Every day in Central Burma, Burmese people engage with their pluralistic medical system. As with all medical systems, confusing, competing, and contradictory logics govern the use of this medical system. In this paper I present a cultural understanding of the ways in which Burma's pluralistic medical system has been transformed through the last century or so. I examine the relationship between private and public healthcare and move out to national and transnational forms of health provision accessed by Burmese people in their search for affordable and curative medicines. I seek to make more complex the provision of healthcare by considering how users encounter and negotiate their way through the Burmese medical system. Finally, I consider some of the longer-term consequences that a lack of the right to health is bringing about in Burma.
Paper 2: Health Security among Internally Displaced and Vulnerable Populations in Eastern Burma
Mahn Mahn, Backpacker Health Worker Team
Today, Burma's health indicators by official figures are among the worst in the region. However, information collected by the Back Pack Health Workers Team (BPHWT) on the eastern frontiers of the country, facing decades of civil war and widespread human rights abuses; indicate a far greater public health catastrophe in areas where official figures are not collected. In these eastern areas of Burma, standard public health indicators such as population pyramids, infant mortality rates, child mortality rates, and maternal mortality ratios more closely resemble other countries facing widespread humanitarian disasters, such as Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Angola, and Cambodia shortly after the ouster of the Khmer Rouge.
The most common cause of death continues to be malaria, with over12% of the population at any given time infected with Plasmodium falciparum, the most dangerous form of malaria. One out of every twelve women in this area may lose her life during pregnancy and around the time of childbirth, deaths that are largely preventable. Malnutrition is unacceptably common, with over 15% of children at any time with evidence of at least mild malnutrition, rates far higher than their counterparts who have fled to refugee camps in Thailand.
There also appear to be some regional variations in the patterns of human rights abuses. The human rights abuses were found to be closely tied to adverse health outcomes. Families forced to flee within the preceding twelve months were 2.4 times more likely to have a child (under age 5) die than those who had not been forcibly displaced. Households forced to flee also were 3.1 times as likely to have malnourished children compared to those in more stable situations.
Food destruction and theft were also very closely tied to several adverse health consequences. Families which had suffered this abuse in the preceding twelve months were almost 50% more likely to suffer a death in the household. These households also were 4.6 times as likely to have a member suffer from a landmine injury, and 1.7 times as likely to have an adult member suffer from malaria, both likely tied to the need to forage in the jungle. Children of these households were 4.4 times as likely to suffer from malnutrition compared to households whose food supply had not been compromised. For the most common abuse, forced labor, families that had suffered from this within the past year were 60% more likely to have a member suffer from diarrhea (within the two weeks prior to the survey).
Not only are many abuses linked statistically from field observations to adverse health consequences, they are yet another obstacle to accessing health care services already out of reach for the majority of IDP populations in the eastern conflict zones of Burma.
Paper 3: The AIDS Epidemic in Myanmar (Burma): An Update on the Problem and Perspective on the International Community's Role in Responding to It
Rachel M. Safman, National University of Singapore
The encroachment of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic into Myanmar (Burma), a process which has likely been underway since the late1980s, has in the last decade gained sufficient momentum to have attracted the attention of the global public health community, as well as the Myanmar government itself. Outbreaks of infection appear to be especially intense in communities in the east of the country, near the Thai border, and in regions where extractive industries (gem and oil mining and timber harvesting) are concentrated, though the problem is no longer confined to these high exposure communities. Rather AIDS has become for Myanmar (like so many countries in Southeast Asia) a routine, if somewhat higher profile, feature of the local disease environment.
What makes the AIDS epidemic in Myanmar atypical, however, is the complexities of combating this disease and controlling its spread in a country riven by internal divisions and largely ostracized by the international community because of the abuses of its military government. In a country in which the banking system has largely ceased to function (rendering importation of pharmaceuticals and other medical supplies a complex and costly proposition), where a significant proportion of the trained health care professionals have emigrated and others function with very limited resources, where the highway infrastructure and government services barely penetrate large stretches of the upland areas which frame the country and where operations of non-governmental actors, both foreign and domestic, are often encumbered by heavy bureaucratic constraints, what hopes are there to control an epidemic which can travel vast distances through a single human carrier and is resistant to even sophisticated therapeutic interventions?
Surprisingly, the outlook of many of those involved in AIDS control and treatment efforts within Myanmar on this question is overwhelmingly positive. While acknowledging the complexities of operating in this political, social and economic environment and the tenacity of the epidemic in other parts of the world (including neighboring India and Thailand), informants working in both the governmental and non-governmental sector have voiced remarkable optimism at the progress made in raising awareness of the disease and its prevention and confidence in their ability to carry out meaningful programs to serve both those at risk and those already affected. However, the sentiment is unanimous that the success of AIDS control efforts in Myanmar will be determined in large part by actors beyond the country's borders. Thus this paper based on fieldwork conducted within Myanmar and with Burmese nationals overseas over a three year period (with additional research scheduled for June '07), focuses, too, on the ways in which the international community can and has been meaningfully involved in responding to a disease which still threatens to undermine a fragile economy and intensify human suffering in one of the poorest countries in Asia.
