Important, authoritative and timely report.
I. THAI GOVERNMENT CLASSIFICATION FOR PEOPLE FROM BURMA:

Temporarily Displaced; Students and Political Dissidents ; Migrants .

II. BRIEF PROFILE OF THE MIGRANTS FROM BURMA .

III REASONS FOR LEAVING BURMA :

Forced Relocations and Land Confiscation ;
Forced Labor and Portering;

War and Political Oppression;

Taxation and Loss of Livelihood;

Economic Conditions .

IV. FEAR OF RETURN.

V. RECEPTION CENTERS.

O estudo demonstra claramente as deficiências dos modelos lineares que separam os processos de elaboração de políticas da sua implementação. Ambos os estudos de caso mostram que a legislação e os regulamentos podem ser modificados, reinterpretados ou simplesmente ignorados quando se trata de implementá-los, quando as relações de poder a nível local se tornam críticas. Esta constatação tem duas implicações directas.

Quando a Lei de Terras 19/97 estabeleceu que o direito de uso e aproveitamento da terra é adquirido por ocupação por pessoas singulares e pelas comunidades locais, segundo as normas e práticas costumeiras que não contrariem a Constituição, criou-se a ruptura com a prática legislativa em Moçambique e em muitos outros países africanos.

Refugees International Advocate Veronika Martin and human rights lawyer Betsy Apple recently completed an assessment mission to the Thai-Burmese border.

In January 2002 it appeared that the SPDC considered most of Dooplaya district of southern Karen State to be pacified and under their control. But then Light Infantry Division 88 was sent in and commenced Operation Than L'Yet, forcibly relocating as many as 60 villages by July. Villagers were rounded up and detained without food for days, or force-marched to Army-controlled relocation sites after their houses were burned. Village heads, women and children were tortured.

The situation of Internally Displaced People (IDP?s), in Burma remained critical throughout 2001. The US State Department
estimates that there could be up to1 million members of ethnic minority groups who the SPDC has forcibly relocated from their
villages and districts, and who are currently living along the Thai border. Reports from NGOs also estimate that an additional 1
million IDP?s are living a precarious existance in other locations throughout the country...

Perhaps one million people living in the States and Divisions of Burma adjacent to the Thailand border have been displaced since 1996. At least 150,000 have fled as refugees or joined the huge “illegal” migrant population in Thailand.[2] Countless others have moved away to other villages and towns in Burma.

Este artigo junta-se aos esforços de muitos outros africanos, entendendo-se por pobreza não só os níveis de rendimento por dia por pessoa, mas também a pobreza como ausência de poder nas relações intra-familiares, entre estas e os demais actores e entre a sociedade no seu todo e os recursos naturais de que se dispõe no Continente Africano.

Beginning 1999 up to March this year (2002), hundreds of thousands of Wa people, who had
impressed British travelers as 'exceedingly well-behaved, industrious, and estimable race', were
forcibly moved to border areas adjacent Thailand. The report is about them, why and how they were
uprooted, what happened to the native people where the Wa were forced to resettle and what the
reader can do to help both categories of victims..."
Important, timely and well-produced
document, complete with maps and photos.

This paper does not presume to offer definitive answers to complex questions raised around the new emphasis on “local communities” in Mozambique. Such answers vary and depend upon the socio political histories of each community. Instead, the paper briefly explores the concept of local community in the lexicon of Mozambican law as well as NGO and donor discourse.

From Cambodia to Kosovo, and now East Timor, the United Nations has undertaken broad governmental functions in an effort to ensure that peace is maintained after the departure of the peacekeepers. On its face, these “peace-building” missions have a powerful logic. Brokering a peace, but leaving behind a vacuum in institutional capacity, only encourages the return of conflict after the peacekeepers leave. Providing urgent humanitarian relief, but failing to integrate it with development aid, ignores the way that development assists in preventing future humanitarian crises.