Resource information
Abstract: "While international humanitarian access in Burma has opened up
over the past decade and a half, the ongoing debate regarding the appropriate
relationship between politics and humanitarian assistance remains unresolved.
This debate has become especially limiting in regards to protection
measures for internally displaced persons (IDPs) which are increasingly seen
to fall within the mandate of humanitarian agencies. Conventional IDP
protection frameworks are biased towards a top-down model of politicallyaverse
intervention which marginalises local initiatives to resist abuse and
hinders local control over protection efforts. Yet such local resistance strategies
remain the most effective IDP protection measures currently employed
in Karen State and other parts of rural Burma. Addressing the protection
needs and underlying humanitarian concerns of displaced and potentially
displaced people is thus inseparable from engagement with the “everyday
politics” of rural villagers. This article seeks to challenge conventional notions
of IDP protection that prioritise a form of state-centric “neutrality”
and marginalise the “everyday politics” through which local villagers continue
to resist abuse and claim their rights...".....
ISSN: 1868-4882 (online), ISSN: 1868-1034 (print)
