Oral Intervention by Rights and Democracy

58th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, 
Geneva, Switzerland
April 2002

Chair,

I am speaking on behalf of the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development. I would like to bring to your attention violence against women in and from Burma.

An extremely repressive regime rules Burma. Gross human rights violations are still continuing in Burma, especially in the ethnic nationality armed conflict areas. Professor Pinheiro, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burma, stated in his report to the Commission that the most serious forms of violence against women are reported in these areas. Many human rights organizations have documented incidences where military officers and soldiers rape ethnic women in conflict areas with impunity. Attempts to seek justice by survivors and their communities are either ignored, at best, or met with retaliation, at worst.

Chair,

Military sexual slavery is common. Women, even pregnant women, are used as forced labor at military camps and construction sites. Some are forced to porter military supplies and are used as minesweepers. While serving as forced laborers or porters, women are often sexually abused and raped. These practices constitute a violation of the Slavery Convention to which Burma became a party to on 18 June 1927. Pregnant women often lose their unborn child due to the poor conditions and lack of access to health care.

Because of untold hardship, thousands of women have left Burma seeking better jobs in the other countries such as Thailand, China, India and Bangladesh. In Thailand alone, recent figures from the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare state that it has registered nearly 200,000 women workers from Burma. The unofficial number is much higher. The jobs migrant women find are usually one of the three ‘D’ jobs, ‘dirty, difficult and dangerous’. These women work in factories, as housemaids and waitresses. All migrant women and girls work in exploitative conditions, receive wages lower than their Thai counterparts and lower than their male migrant counterparts. Thailand has excluded domestic work from the list of registered jobs. Not only are Burmese migrant women more vulnerable to exploitation but also to abuse and rape by traffickers, the police and other authorities, and their employers.

Trafficking is a problem closely associated with undocumented migration. There are approximately 40,000 women working in the sex industry in Thailand. Thousands of Muslim Rohingya women from southwestern Burma, who live in refugee camps in Bangladesh, have reportedly been trafficked into the sex industry in Pakistan. In closed brothels debt-bonded sex-workers have no rights and therefore no control over their working conditions. Unable to refuse abusive customers, totally dependent on the brothel owners for their food, accommodation and so-called security, they are extremely vulnerable to violence and health problems, including exposure to HIV/AIDS. Many are HIV/AIDS positive. Most of these sex workers are young; they were abducted, or trafficked into sex work without their prior knowledge, and are essentially imprisoned by their debt bondage.

Chair,

Burmese women are not only suffering from oppression by the Burmese government. On March 17, three Thai soldiers allegedly raped two Karenni refugee women, aged 20 and 15 years old, near a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border. They were raped while looking for vegetables near the camp. Many young refugee women face problems in the camps along the Thai-Burma border with camp officials and soldiers nearby. There is often no redress for these crimes. I urge the Commission to ask the Thai government to take action against such perpetrators and provide adequate security in the camps for women and girls.

In conclusion, violence against women will only be resolved if we restore democracy in Burma. Women’s organizations could then focus on working for their rights and increasing their participation in the political, economic, and social arenas without fear.

Thank you.