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COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Sixtieth session
Item 10 of the provisional agenda
ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS
Written statement submitted by the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC),
a non-governmental organization in general consultative status
Food scarcity in Myanmar
1. The Asian Legal Resource Centre has, over a number of years, brought credible reports of food scarcity in Myanmar to the attention of the Commission (most recently at its fifty-ninth session, E/CN.4/2003/NGO/84). Hunger persists in Myanmar not due to natural disaster or causes otherwise beyond human control, but rather because of the policies and practices of the Government of Myanmar, which deny people's right to food.
2. In the past year, the Asian Legal Resource Centre announced the launch of the Permanent People's Tribunal on the Right to Food and the Rule of Law in Asia. In its introduction to the Tribunal, which comprises a number of eminent Asian jurists and activists, the Asian Legal Resource Centre observed that the Tribunal comes at a time when many governments still falsely assert that economic and social rights can be addressed separately from civil and political rights. In fact, political equality among human beings can be guaranteed only when the right to food is adequately met. However, apart from people in a few industrialised countries, the populations of the world are yet to know even the most rudimentary equality, evidenced daily by the billions denied access to adequate and safe food and water. Such inequality affects the organization of all societies, including those in Asia. Authoritarian rule has an explicit link to inequalities relating to food and water. It is not possible for a government to win popular consent until it has satisfied its people's basic nutritional needs. Therefore, societies where large numbers of people are going hungry are inevitably ruled without popular consent and participation.
3. Legal equality is also intrinsically connected to the right to food. Equality before law has little meaning when adequate food and water are denied. In fact, law enforcement agencies often become instruments to suppress aspirations to equality, and in so doing commit gross violation of human rights. The aggressive nature of the police in many countries arises from inequality and efforts to sustain it. This includes inequality in the distribution of food and water. The willingness to ignore or suppress the rule of law goes hand in hand with the willingness to ignore basic economic rights. To maintain inequality in the distribution of food and water requires state-managed violence. Torture is used to keep people hungry. Fear is instilled to deprive people of basic economic rights and retard their capacity to react. Detention and extra-judicial killings become normalised. This denial of the right to food, then, is accompanied by a breakdown in the rule of law. Therefore, the fight against torture, illegal detention, extrajudicial killing and other violations of civil and political rights is essential to create and maintain the space necessary to struggle for adequate food and water.
4. The Permanent People's Tribunal on the Right to Food and the Rule of Law in Asia is the successor to the earlier People's Tribunal on Food Scarcity and Militarization in Burma (Myanmar). That Tribunal, which operated from 1996 to 2000, researched and analysed the relationship between hunger and military rule in Myanmar. It found that despite a stated commitment to food security, the government there was inimical to the food needs of its people. One impetus for the new Permanent People's Tribunal has been the stream of reports coming from Myanmar indicating that in the period since the previous People's Tribunal completed its work, food conditions in that country have not improved. Indeed, many of these reports suggest a marked deterioration in conditions. The recommendations of the People's Tribunal too have not been implemented. These included calls on the Government of Myanmar to guarantee the food security of its people, and to the international community to take steps to ensure that this be achieved. While the government has insisted that it does in fact respect the right to food, and does all it can to achieve it, this stated commitment is not borne out by evidence. Furthermore, while the international community has responded to the Tribunal's call, to date its reaction has remained limited and far short of what could be achieved. In particular, there remains the Tribunal's important conclusion that as "the Government of Myanmar is largely responsible for food scarcity [it] may be considered guilty of a crime against humanity, punishable under international law." In establishing the justiciability of the right to food, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food is just now hinting at this eventual possibility.
5. Reports received by the Permanent People's Tribunal in 2003 indicate that food-related crime (rice theft, raiding of storehouses) is continuing. The system of compulsory paddy procurement is still widely implemented by local authorities, despite official announcements to the contrary. Farmers are arrested and sometimes tortured for failing to provide the amount of paddy ordered. Similarly, land confiscations and forced relocations by the army and local authorities, particularly in remote areas of the country where farmers may not have documents indicating legal title and may lack any legal recourse, continue unabated.
6. In particular, during October 2003, the Permanent People's Tribunal received the important "Reclaiming the Right to Rice: Food Security and Internal Displacement in Eastern Burma" report of the Burmese Border Consortium. The report consists of a range of statements by persons and groups concerned with the right to food in the east of Myanmar describing a litany of food-related problems earlier captured by the report of the People's Tribunal on Food Scarcity and Militarization in Burma (Myanmar). These include the destruction of crops, land confiscation, rampant inflation due to trade restrictions, ongoing sporadic armed conflict, forced labour, and environmental damage--including deforestation caused by uncontrolled logging, and construction of small hydroelectric dams. Some features of the 2003 report linking food insecurity to government policies and the lack of security and rule of law for persons in these areas include the following:
a. In northern Shan State the Government of Myanmar issued orders that in 2003 only a foreign strain of paddy (DU.527 Sin Shwe Li) could be cultivated. Villagers had to destroy paddy crops that had already been planted or risk having their lands confiscated. Rather than recycling their indigenous seed, farmers had to buy the new seed at 11,000 kyat per basket (US per 32 kilograms) as well as chemical fertiliser so that the crop would grow. The farmers were also ordered to sell their paddy harvest back to the government at the standard rate of 400 kyat per basket (US.40 per 32 kilograms). If farmers could not sell back the required amount, they had to pay 3,000 kyat per basket (US per 32 kilograms) in cash.
b. For women from displaced communities in contested areas, tending to remote fields and searching for food in the forest place them at risk of sexual violence. For example, in April 2003 a woman who was gathering bamboo shoots near her village in eastern Shan State's Tachilek township was gang raped by government troops. Similarly, in central Nam Zarng township during June 2003, five girls under the age of 16 were detained by government troops while tending to a soya bean field and were raped over a period of two days and nights.
c. A nutrition survey of 632 children in one region near the border by the Backpack Health Workers Team found that over 11 per cent of the children were seriously malnourished, with large numbers eating no meats, eggs or beans.
7. As noted above, the recommendations of the People's Tribunal on Food Scarcity and Militarization in Burma (Myanmar) have to date gone unheeded, as have those recommendations made to the Commission by the Asian Legal Resource Centre at its annual sessions. In its "Reclaiming the Right to Rice" report, the Burmese Border Consortium too has recommended that the Government of Myanmar should invite the Special Rapporteur on the right to food and Special Representative of the Secretary General on internal displacement to investigate thoroughly the existing situation in Myanmar. While the Asian Legal Resource Centre concurs with these suggestions, realistically, they are unlikely to eventuate any time soon. The pretensions of the Government of Myanmar to have an interest in the wellbeing of its people--beyond the modicum necessary for it to ensure its continued authority--have consistently proven fraudulent. That this is certainly the case was most recently demonstrated by its orchestrated attack on a civilian political convoy in May 2003, on which the Asian Legal Resource Centre has this year made a separate written statement to the Commission. An effective response to the massive rights violations committed as a matter of routine by the Government of Myanmar requires far more than the mere scheduling of periodic visits by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights there. It will require active interventions, the use of considerable resources, and above all, strong will from the United Nations system to see that genuine and lasting change is in fact begun in Myanmar without further delay. Those who are hungry cannot afford to wait.
Posted on 2004-03-03
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