[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

CHR/BURMA: NGO STATEMENTS (Item 10)



--=====================_42914365==_.ALT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Statements by:

Worldview International Foundation (Ms. Khin Ohmar)
International Peace Bureau (Ms Aye Hla Phyu)

April 8, 1999
55 th Session of the UNHCHR
Geneva, Switzerland
Oral Intervention on Item 10
Worldview International Foundation 
Delivered by Ms. Khin Ohmar

Madame Chairperson,

One issue which highlights the inseparability of Civil, Political, Social and
Cultural Rights is military expenditure.  There are some countries that spend a
very high proportion of their national budgets for military purposes, to solve
the country?s problems by military means rather than looking for political
solutions.  Because of their military expenditures, these countries lack
resources to implement the welfare of the people.  These countries include
Afghanistan, Angola, North Korea, and Burma. Since Burma is my country and I
have better knowledge about it, I will focus on the situation of Burma.

The appalling human rights situation in Burma is undeniable and inescapable
despite the oral commitment repeatedly made by the ruling military regime to
the Commission.  One of the many tragedies within Burma?s appalling human
rights situation, but one which receives relatively little attention, is its
deteriorating health condition.

The situation of women?s health in Burma as is so grave that it requires the
attention of the Commission. Women constitute more than half of the country?s
population (46 million) and their wellbeing is crucial, indeed, for the
country?s development and betterment of society. 

Yet, the scarcity of health and social indicators demonstrates the negligence
of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), in fulfilling the
fundamental needs for the welfare of the people.  While the regime spends more
than 50 percent of the national expenditure for military expansion, only
approximately 65% of the populace have access to basic health services.  The
national infant mortality rate in 1995 was 94 for every 1000 live births
compared with 34 in Vietnam, 27 in Thailand, and 11 in Malaysia.  According to
a 1995 UNICEF report, one million children in Burma are malnourished, about 11%
them severely so. The high rate of babies with birth weight below 2,500 grams
may be the reflection of the high malnutrition levels among pregnant women in
Burma. 

UNICEF reports that the maternal mortality rate is 140 per 100,000 live births
which is the third highest in the East Asia and Pacific region. Most maternal
deaths are due to induced abortions, largely conducted clandestinely, and to
unsanitary conditions. The reproductive health of Burmese women is one of the
least acknowledged health issues in Burma and the paucity of information on
this issue indicates that many of the women?s needs have long been unrecognised
by the State.

Women who suffer the most in Burma are from rural and non-Burman areas as they
are denied even the most basic medical attention and access to basic health
care. The lack of health workers is all the more pressing while there is also
widespread lack of essential medicines.  Yet, the military regime?s spending on
health care even dropped from 2.6 percent in 1991-1992 to 1.8 percent in
1993-1994 and 1.6 percent in 1994-1995. 

Madame Chairperson,

Due to the country?s social and economic impoverishment, women in particular
are caught up in the rising social problems. The rates for separation of
families and divorce are increasing as a result of economic pressure. Husbands
who commute to their work in cities find it difficult to return every day to
their homes located on the outskirts of the cities due to transportation and
financial problems, and end up staying in the cities, leading them eventually
to abandon their wives and children.  In any case, women and children suffer
the most direct consequences from these social problems. According to the 1995
UNICEF report, only 62 percent of children sign up for primary school education
although it is compulsory and about 750,000 children drop out of school each
year.  

Two other significant social problems that women in Burma face nowadays are the
issues of employment and prostitution.  Since the shut-down of universities and
colleges after the crack-down on the student protests in December 1996, a
greater number of young people including many girls have left for neighbouring
countries such as Thailand in search for means of survival for themselves and
also to support their families back home. While many young women and girls end
up working in factories where their dignity and labour is being exploited,
others have been forced into prostitution and face inhumane treatment under
slave-like conditions. Today in Thailand alone, at least 50,000 young Burmese
women are working in the thriving sex industry.  The prostitution business
itself is booming inside the country as women are left with little or no choice
but to enter into this business in order to support their families. These women
both in and outside the country are at greater risk of getting infected with
HIV/AIDS.

The AIDS epidemic is increasing in Burma today and the military regime has done
almost nothing to solve this problem.  According to Peter Piot, the director of
UNAIDS, during a press conference in Bangkok last Friday on April 2, 1999,
Burma has the second worst AIDS epidemic in Asia after Cambodia, with an
estimate of at least 440,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS. Yet, medical
resources, educational materials and programs are insufficient for the public,
especially in rural and remote areas.  Yet, SPDC claims that there are only
21,503 confirmed HIV cases and 2,854 AIDS cases.  The UNAIDS director said that
the big challenge is the recognition of the problem by the military regime.  

Madame Chairperson,

Again, I would like to reiterate my statement that the situation of women?s
health in my country is of grave concern and needs to be addressed sooner
rather than later.  As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi says, ?Some of the best indicators
of a country developing along the right lines are healthy mothers giving birth
to healthy children who are assured of good care and a sound education that
will enable them to face the challenges of a changing world.  Our dreams for
the future of the children of Burma have to be woven firmly around a commitment
to better health care and better education.?

However, only responsible governments will promote and also protect women?s
rights along with the fundamental rights of all its nationalities. In the case
of Burma, the SPDC has not only neglected the wellbeing of the people,
particularly of women and children; they are also accountable for the ongoing
human rights violations in the country.  In closing, on behalf of the people of
Burma, I strongly urge the Burmese generals to seek political rather than
military solutions to the country?s problems.  

Thank you

********************

[Items in brackets are not to be read out]
April 7, 1999
Oral Intervention  on Item 10
International Peace Bureau
Delivered by Aye Hla Phyu (Ms)

Madam chairperson:

When many people think of human rights, civil and political rights first come
to mind.  In our ongoing struggle for human rights, we accept the primacy of
those entitlements that allow us to participate in the public lives of our
countries: the right to speak freely, the right to associate with whomever we
chose, the right to expect a society in which the rule of law governs.  Because
these rights are well-established and familiar to many, they receive more
protection than some others: our social, economic, and cultural rights.  For
people living in poverty or in a state of disenfranchisement from their
government, their economic, social, and cultural rights are at the gravest
risk.  For women, in particular, our social, economic, and cultural rights are
most fragile and most important to our well-being.

I would like to give you a specific example of the terrible threat to women's
social, economic, and cultural rights ongoing at this moment in my country,
Burma.  While my country is just one of a multitude of places in which women
struggle to protect their social, economic, and cultural rights, it is one of
the most poignant examples.  In this country of forty-six million people,
fifty-one percent are women.  Yet, women are in the minority sector--in fact,
the oppressed sector--in virtually every aspect of social, economic, and
cultural life.

[Traditional stereotypes of women's roles die hard in my country.  It is
assumed that women will take the primary responsibility for child-rearing and
managing the household, even if we choose to do otherwise.  In fact, many men
believe that women are ill-suited for any other kind of work, and fail to give
us the opportunity to prove ourselves in another context.  If, as we often
must, we stay home to care for the family, we do not receive the credit and the
appreciation we deserve for our work.  The job of raising and care for a family
is not perceived as a useful job in our culture, and therefore we are
denigrated for our efforts.  Even those men who are considered to be
"enlightened," including many of those who are active in the movement for
democracy and human rights in Burma, want their wives to stay home with little
reward.]

[Many of us would like to advance our education.  However, numerous barriers
stand between us and a higher education.  Particularly for girls in rural
areas, education is discouraged after the fifth or sixth standard, if that. 
Female literary rates (to the extent official statistics exist) are
considerably lower than those for males.  When the colleges in Burma are open,
itself a rare occurrence under the present regime's fear of uprising, women are
admitted far less frequently than men.  Furthermore, certain programs of
study--for example, engineering--while not prohibited to women, are to a large
extent foreclosed, because women must meet far higher entrance standards than
men.  If we are actively discouraged from going to school, if we are
aggressively channeled into certain professions labeled as "female," if we do
not learn to read, then how can we possibly meet our potential?]

[So, we find that for many women from Burma, the job opportunities fall into a
few circumscribed (and in some cases, downright unappetizing) categories:
housewife; forced laborer; sex worker; and impoverished refugee.   We have
already mentioned the problem of domestic responsibilities in Burma.]  It is
not overstating the case to say that the State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC) evades its obligations under both the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women.  It does so by failing to educate the people of Burma on the
value and dignity of raising a family, and by reinforcing, rather than
overturning, traditional and harmful gender stereotypes.  [The regime,
furthermore, violates women's economic, social, and cultural rights with a
program calculated to employ women primarily as low-wage workers (at best), and
as sex slaves and forced laborers, at worst.]  The myriad incidents of forced
labor in Burma, for women and men alike, have been extensively documented, most
recently and compellingly by the International Labour Organization.  Women, in
particular, are singled out as human shields and mine sweepers during their
tenure as forced laborers, as the SPDC's army, [the Tatmadaw,] apparently
believes them to be both more expendable and less likely to draw enemy fire. 
Furthermore, women conscripted as forced laborers are sometimes required to
perform twenty-four-hour guard duty, since they are deemed unfit for any other
work.  These women, as many other women engaged in forced labor, are often
subject to sexual abuse at the hands of the soldiers.  

[Yet another job description which the women are Burma are frequently required
to fill is that of involuntary sex worker.  The trafficking of girls from Burma
to Thailand?s sex industry has been extensively and credibly documented by a
number of human rights and women's organizations.  The expansion of this
industry across the Indian border has been less explored, but appears, from
anecdotal evidence, to be burgeoning as well.  While no nongovernmental
organizations are currently focused on documenting or assisting Burmese women
involved in sex work in India, members of the Mizoram government's Social
Welfare Department have identified Burma as the primary source of new
prostitutes in the region.  With no other viable economic choices, the social
stigma of prostitution pales in comparison with the prospect of starvation.]

Thousands of women from Burma's ethnic minority groups, our social, economic,
and cultural rights are abridged by our refugee status.  Or, to be even more
precise, if we are forced to flee our country due to oppression and persecution
to Thailand, we are not even accorded the status of refugees, as Thailand has
not acceded to the refugee convention.  Socially, we are people without a
place; economically, we are people without livelihoods; and culturally, we are
people without a community.  We cannot teach our children properly, and there
is no chance to develop and propagate our culture.  We cannot feed our families
well, and must rely on the well-meaning but insubstantial donations of
kind-hearted NGOs.  As this esteemed body well knows, human rights are
meaningless without regular access to meals.

A deathly struggle is being waged in many parts of the world by women.   This
is the struggle for dignity, for cultural autonomy, for social equality, for
economic independence.  Nowhere is this struggle more apparent than in my
country of Burma.  I urge the Commission on Human Rights to take all possible
steps to ensure that women in my country and throughout the world have the
opportunities to enjoy these most important rights.

Thank you.


Internet ProLink PC User

--=====================_42914365==_.ALT
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<html>
<font face=3D"Times New Roman, Times">Statements by:<br>
<br>
Worldview International Foundation (Ms. Khin Ohmar)<br>
International Peace Bureau (Ms Aye Hla Phyu)<br>
<br>
April 8, 1999<br>
55 th Session of the UNHCHR<br>
Geneva, Switzerland<br>
Oral Intervention on Item 10<br>
Worldview International Foundation <br>
Delivered by Ms. Khin Ohmar<br>
<br>
Madame Chairperson,<br>
<br>
One issue which highlights the inseparability of Civil, Political, Social
and Cultural Rights is military expenditure.&nbsp; There are some
countries that spend a very high proportion of their national budgets for
military purposes, to solve the country=92s problems by military means
rather than looking for political solutions.&nbsp; Because of their
military expenditures, these countries lack resources to implement the
welfare of the people.&nbsp; These countries include Afghanistan, Angola,
North Korea, and Burma. Since Burma is my country and I have better
knowledge about it, I will focus on the situation of Burma.<br>
<br>
The appalling human rights situation in Burma is undeniable and
inescapable despite the oral commitment repeatedly made by the ruling
military regime to the Commission.&nbsp; One of the many tragedies within
Burma=92s appalling human rights situation, but one which receives
relatively little attention, is its deteriorating health condition.<br>
<br>
The situation of women=92s health in Burma as is so grave that it requires
the attention of the Commission. Women constitute more than half of the
country=92s population (46 million) and their wellbeing is crucial, indeed,
for the country=92s development and betterment of society. <br>
<br>
Yet, the scarcity of health and social indicators demonstrates the
negligence of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), in
fulfilling the fundamental needs for the welfare of the people.&nbsp;
While the regime spends more than 50 percent of the national expenditure
for military expansion, only approximately 65% of the populace have
access to basic health services.&nbsp; The national infant mortality rate
in 1995 was 94 for every 1000 live births compared with 34 in Vietnam, 27
in Thailand, and 11 in Malaysia.&nbsp; According to a 1995 UNICEF report,
one million children in Burma are malnourished, about 11% them severely
so. The high rate of babies with birth weight below 2,500 grams may be
the reflection of the high malnutrition levels among pregnant women in
Burma. <br>
<br>
UNICEF reports that the maternal mortality rate is 140 per 100,000 live
births which is the third highest in the East Asia and Pacific region.
Most maternal deaths are due to induced abortions, largely conducted
clandestinely, and to unsanitary conditions. The reproductive health of
Burmese women is one of the least acknowledged health issues in Burma and
the paucity of information on this issue indicates that many of the
women=92s needs have long been unrecognised by the State.<br>
<br>
Women who suffer the most in Burma are from rural and non-Burman areas as
they are denied even the most basic medical attention and access to basic
health care. The lack of health workers is all the more pressing while
there is also widespread lack of essential medicines.&nbsp; Yet, the
military regime=92s spending on health care even dropped from 2.6 percent
in 1991-1992 to 1.8 percent in 1993-1994 and 1.6 percent in 1994-1995.
<br>
<br>
Madame Chairperson,<br>
<br>
Due to the country=92s social and economic impoverishment, women in
particular are caught up in the rising social problems. The rates for
separation of families and divorce are increasing as a result of economic
pressure. Husbands who commute to their work in cities find it difficult
to return every day to their homes located on the outskirts of the cities
due to transportation and financial problems, and end up staying in the
cities, leading them eventually to abandon their wives and
children.&nbsp; In any case, women and children suffer the most direct
consequences from these social problems. According to the 1995 UNICEF
report, only 62 percent of children sign up for primary school education
although it is compulsory and about 750,000 children drop out of school
each year.&nbsp; <br>
<br>
Two other significant social problems that women in Burma face nowadays
are the issues of employment and prostitution.&nbsp; Since the shut-down
of universities and colleges after the crack-down on the student protests
in December 1996, a greater number of young people including many girls
have left for neighbouring countries such as Thailand in search for means
of survival for themselves and also to support their families back home.
While many young women and girls end up working in factories where their
dignity and labour is being exploited, others have been forced into
prostitution and face inhumane treatment under slave-like conditions.
Today in Thailand alone, at least 50,000 young Burmese women are working
in the thriving sex industry.&nbsp; The prostitution business itself is
booming inside the country as women are left with little or no choice but
to enter into this business in order to support their families. These
women both in and outside the country are at greater risk of getting
infected with HIV/AIDS.<br>
<br>
The AIDS epidemic is increasing in Burma today and the military regime
has done almost nothing to solve this problem.&nbsp; According to Peter
Piot, the director of UNAIDS, during a press conference in Bangkok last
Friday on April 2, 1999, Burma has the second worst AIDS epidemic in Asia
after Cambodia, with an estimate of at least 440,000 people infected with
HIV/AIDS. Yet, medical resources, educational materials and programs are
insufficient for the public, especially in rural and remote areas.&nbsp;
Yet, SPDC claims that there are only 21,503 confirmed HIV cases and 2,854
AIDS cases.&nbsp; The UNAIDS director said that the big challenge is the
recognition of the problem by the military regime.&nbsp; <br>
<br>
Madame Chairperson,<br>
<br>
Again, I would like to reiterate my statement that the situation of
women=92s health in my country is of grave concern and needs to be
addressed sooner rather than later.&nbsp; As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi says,
=93Some of the best indicators of a country developing along the right
lines are healthy mothers giving birth to healthy children who are
assured of good care and a sound education that will enable them to face
the challenges of a changing world.&nbsp; Our dreams for the future of
the children of Burma have to be woven firmly around a commitment to
better health care and better education.=94<br>
<br>
However, only responsible governments will promote and also protect
women=92s rights along with the fundamental rights of all its
nationalities. In the case of Burma, the SPDC has not only neglected the
wellbeing of the people, particularly of women and children; they are
also accountable for the ongoing human rights violations in the
country.&nbsp; In closing, on behalf of the people of Burma, I strongly
urge the Burmese generals to seek political rather than military
solutions to the country=92s problems.&nbsp; <br>
<br>
Thank you<br>
<br>
********************<br>
<br>
[Items in brackets are not to be read out]<br>
April 7, 1999<br>
Oral Intervention&nbsp; on Item 10<br>
International Peace Bureau<br>
Delivered by Aye Hla Phyu (Ms)<br>
<br>
Madam chairperson:<br>
<br>
When many people think of human rights, civil and political rights first
come to mind.&nbsp; In our ongoing struggle for human rights, we accept
the primacy of those entitlements that allow us to participate in the
public lives of our countries: the right to speak freely, the right to
associate with whomever we chose, the right to expect a society in which
the rule of law governs.&nbsp; Because these rights are well-established
and familiar to many, they receive more protection than some others: our
social, economic, and cultural rights.&nbsp; For people living in poverty
or in a state of disenfranchisement from their government, their
economic, social, and cultural rights are at the gravest risk.&nbsp; For
women, in particular, our social, economic, and cultural rights are most
fragile and most important to our well-being.<br>
<br>
I would like to give you a specific example of the terrible threat to
women's social, economic, and cultural rights ongoing at this moment in
my country, Burma.&nbsp; While my country is just one of a multitude of
places in which women struggle to protect their social, economic, and
cultural rights, it is one of the most poignant examples.&nbsp; In this
country of forty-six million people, fifty-one percent are women.&nbsp;
Yet, women are in the minority sector--in fact, the oppressed sector--in
virtually every aspect of social, economic, and cultural life.<br>
<br>
[Traditional stereotypes of women's roles die hard in my country.&nbsp;
It is assumed that women will take the primary responsibility for
child-rearing and managing the household, even if we choose to do
otherwise.&nbsp; In fact, many men believe that women are ill-suited for
any other kind of work, and fail to give us the opportunity to prove
ourselves in another context.&nbsp; If, as we often must, we stay home to
care for the family, we do not receive the credit and the appreciation we
deserve for our work.&nbsp; The job of raising and care for a family is
not perceived as a useful job in our culture, and therefore we are
denigrated for our efforts.&nbsp; Even those men who are considered to be
&quot;enlightened,&quot; including many of those who are active in the
movement for democracy and human rights in Burma, want their wives to
stay home with little reward.]<br>
<br>
[Many of us would like to advance our education.&nbsp; However, numerous
barriers stand between us and a higher education.&nbsp; Particularly for
girls in rural areas, education is discouraged after the fifth or sixth
standard, if that.&nbsp; Female literary rates (to the extent official
statistics exist) are considerably lower than those for males.&nbsp; When
the colleges in Burma are open, itself a rare occurrence under the
present regime's fear of uprising, women are admitted far less frequently
than men.&nbsp; Furthermore, certain programs of study--for example,
engineering--while not prohibited to women, are to a large extent
foreclosed, because women must meet far higher entrance standards than
men.&nbsp; If we are actively discouraged from going to school, if we are
aggressively channeled into certain professions labeled as
&quot;female,&quot; if we do not learn to read, then how can we possibly
meet our potential?]<br>
<br>
[So, we find that for many women from Burma, the job opportunities fall
into a few circumscribed (and in some cases, downright unappetizing)
categories: housewife; forced laborer; sex worker; and impoverished
refugee.&nbsp;&nbsp; We have already mentioned the problem of domestic
responsibilities in Burma.]&nbsp; It is not overstating the case to say
that the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) evades its
obligations under both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women.&nbsp; It does so by failing to educate the people of Burma on the
value and dignity of raising a family, and by reinforcing, rather than
overturning, traditional and harmful gender stereotypes.&nbsp; [The
regime, furthermore, violates women's economic, social, and cultural
rights with a program calculated to employ women primarily as low-wage
workers (at best), and as sex slaves and forced laborers, at
worst.]&nbsp; The myriad incidents of forced labor in Burma, for women
and men alike, have been extensively documented, most recently and
compellingly by the International Labour Organization.&nbsp; Women, in
particular, are singled out as human shields and mine sweepers during
their tenure as forced laborers, as the SPDC's army, [the Tatmadaw,]
apparently believes them to be both more expendable and less likely to
draw enemy fire.&nbsp; Furthermore, women conscripted as forced laborers
are sometimes required to perform twenty-four-hour guard duty, since they
are deemed unfit for any other work.&nbsp; These women, as many other
women engaged in forced labor, are often subject to sexual abuse at the
hands of the soldiers.&nbsp; <br>
<br>
[Yet another job description which the women are Burma are frequently
required to fill is that of involuntary sex worker.&nbsp; The trafficking
of girls from Burma to Thailand=92s sex industry has been extensively and
credibly documented by a number of human rights and women's
organizations.&nbsp; The expansion of this industry across the Indian
border has been less explored, but appears, from anecdotal evidence, to
be burgeoning as well.&nbsp; While no nongovernmental organizations are
currently focused on documenting or assisting Burmese women involved in
sex work in India, members of the Mizoram government's Social Welfare
Department have identified Burma as the primary source of new prostitutes
in the region.&nbsp; With no other viable economic choices, the social
stigma of prostitution pales in comparison with the prospect of
starvation.]<br>
<br>
Thousands of women from Burma's ethnic minority groups, our social,
economic, and cultural rights are abridged by our refugee status.&nbsp;
Or, to be even more precise, if we are forced to flee our country due to
oppression and persecution to Thailand, we are not even accorded the
status of refugees, as Thailand has not acceded to the refugee
convention.&nbsp; Socially, we are people without a place; economically,
we are people without livelihoods; and culturally, we are people without
a community.&nbsp; We cannot teach our children properly, and there is no
chance to develop and propagate our culture.&nbsp; We cannot feed our
families well, and must rely on the well-meaning but insubstantial
donations of kind-hearted NGOs.&nbsp; As this esteemed body well knows,
human rights are meaningless without regular access to meals.<br>
<br>
A deathly struggle is being waged in many parts of the world by
women.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is the struggle for dignity, for cultural
autonomy, for social equality, for economic independence.&nbsp; Nowhere
is this struggle more apparent than in my country of Burma.&nbsp; I urge
the Commission on Human Rights to take all possible steps to ensure that
women in my country and throughout the world have the opportunities to
enjoy these most important rights.<br>
<br>
Thank you.<br>
<br>
</font><br>
<div>Internet ProLink PC User</div>
</html>

--=====================_42914365==_.ALT--