Country Information

Burma is situated among the nations of Bangladesh, China, Laos, Thailand, and Malaysia and its population is approximately 55 million. The dominant Burman group is estimated to be 65% of the population. Ethnic minority groups in the country include the Shan, Karen, Karenni, Kachin, Rakhine, Chin, Rohingya, and Mon, and between these groups hundreds of languages are spoken. Buddhists make up the majority of the population (90%), with Christian (5%), Muslim (4%), and animists (1%) also present.

Political and Economic Environment

Burma is ruled by a military regime, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) which came to power in 1988, following a brutal suppression of a pro-democracy uprising. Although the regime allowed free elections in 1990, they ignored the results which gave the National League for Democracy 82% of the parliamentary seats.

The military junta continues to deny freedom of speech, association, and the press. It routinely employs torture and political imprisonment directed mostly against Burma’s numerous ethnic minority groups.

Although Burma is a resource-rich country with a strong agricultural base, the regime’s mismanagement of the economy has created a downward economic spiral. Today Burma is one of the poorest countries in Asia and is classified by the UN as a Least Developed Country, resulting from widespread malnutrition and low retention rates for schools. Estimates of the military expenditure range from 29 to 50 percent of the total government budget, with only 3 percent of its budget geared towards health and 8 percent towards education.

In August 2007, demonstrators took to the streets to protest the sudden hike in fuel prices by the SPDC. These small scale protests were eventually suppressed. The following month, Burma’s monks took up the demonstrations again. After 11 days of peaceful protests, the SPDC staged a violent crackdown on the monks and Burmese civilians who had joined them. The number of dead and arrested remains unclear, but is estimated to be in the hundreds. The international community issued statements of concern for the situation in Burma and urged restraint from the SPDC. The government rejoined with the expulsion of the UN’s most senior representative and proposed increased restrictions on the ability of humanitarian agencies to operate inside Burma.

In February 2008, the SPDC announced a referendum on a new constitution for the country, set for May 10, 2008, to be followed by nationwide elections in 2010.

Humanitarian Situation

For more than five decades, Burma has been entrenched in political and armed conflict between the government and ethnic groups. The conflict has been characterized by massive human rights abuses of the populations such as persecution, torture, extrajudicial executions, widespread rape, and forced labor.

Burma is widely believed to be one of the poorest countries in the world. The UN Development Program estimates that GDP per capita in Burma is the 13th lowest in the world. The average Burmese family spends 75% of that meager income on securing adequate food supplies. Less than 50% of children complete primary school and according to UNICEF under-5 child mortality averages 104 per 1,000 children, the second-highest rate outside Africa, after Afghanistan. Burma also has the highest HIV rates in Southeast Asia, and malaria, a treatable and preventable disease, is still the leading cause of mortality and morbidity.

Western donor governments, until recently, have opted to impose broad-based sanctions, including limiting humanitarian and development assistance to minimal levels, to pressure the government into reforms. While the government has shown indifference to the West and its policies, the impact on Burma’s population is undeniable. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Burma receives less overseas development assistance, a mere $2.88 per person, than any of the poorest 50 countries. The average assistance in this tier of countries is more than $58 per person. Other countries with similarly repressive governments routinely receive much larger assistance packages: Sudan ($55/person); Zimbabwe ($21/person); Laos ($63/person).

The largest concentration of internally displaced people in Burma is found among ethnic groups in the east of the country, near the border with Thailand, with estimates suggesting that 500,000 are either in hiding or in relocation sites as a result of widespread human rights abuses committed mostly by the Burmese army and its allies. In addition, hundreds of thousands more have been displaced in schemes to resettle the urban poor and the building of large-scale infrastructure projects.

Hundreds of thousands of Burmese belonging to ethnic minority groups have fled to neighboring countries in search of asylum. More than 150,000 Karen and Karenni Burmese live in the nine refugee camps in Thailand alone.

Bangladesh is host to 220,000 Burmese Rohingya refugees, with up to 200,000 Rohingya living outside the camps as illegal migrants. In India, upwards of 50,000 Burmese Chin and Kachin are living in northeastern states, where UNHCR is not allowed to access them. There are at least 40,000 Burmese Chin refugees in Malaysia. In general, Burmese refugees living in Malaysia are targeted by immigration forces and are extremely vulnerable to arrest and detention. An unknown number of refugees, mostly Kachin, are living in China. Many of the displaced Burmese are denied access to education, health, and political institutions in their host countries.

None of the countries harboring large refugee populations from Burma have signed the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and several have changed their policies, at the cost of the rights of asylum seekers, in order to cultivate better relations with the Burmese government. For a more detailed discussion on the situation that confronts many humanitarian agencies in Burma, please read Burma: Key Facts on the Working Environment for International Agencies.

In 2005, the United States initiated a large-scale program to resettle Burmese refugees living in Thailand and Malaysia. Initially the resettlement program virtually ground to a halt due to strict interpretation by the Department of Homeland Security of Congressional prohibitions on the entry into the United States of individuals who have provided “material support” to armed groups. The fact that this assistance may have been provided under duress, was usually given in token amounts, and was provided to groups contesting a government that the U.S. deplores was all deemed immaterial in the name of homeland security. Since then, the U.S. State Department has granted material support waivers to Burmese Karen, Chin, Kayan, Arakan, and Karenni groups. However, these waivers do not include former combatants or those who received military training from rebel groups, which means that some camp residents in Thailand for example are ineligible for resettlement and families are being forced to split up.

Updated April 2008