"Drawing upon recent KHRG reports, this Commentary asks the question why the Karen ceasefire is not generating a human rights dividend for Karen villagers, and looks for the answer in the nature of conflict in Burma. It finds the conflict to be much broader than that between armed entities, pitting villagers against the military junta in a daily struggle for control of their lives. The villagers? role in this struggle is too often ignored, both by outside actors who insist on treating villagers as passive bystanders to their own context, and by activists who seek to subjugate everything to the narrow struggle for an elitist Burmese ?democracy?. In human rights, aid and political discourse on Burma, double standards are applied which further marginalise rural, agrarian, and non-Burman voices, when the real need now is for these voices to be heard more in political processes. The Commentary also discusses the SPDC?s efforts to evade international pressure for its use of forced labour by hiding the evidence, using convict labour, and putting its child soldiers to work on roads, and the effects these tactics are having on rural villagers. Finally, it explains KHRG?s efforts to expand our research agenda and make our reports more useful."