Forced migration: typology and local agency in Southeast Myanmar.

• Author: South, Ashley

This article describes and analyses the decision-making processes and approaches to return, resettlement and rehabilitation of forced migrants--Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and refugees--in the context of armed conflict and an emerging peace process in southeast Myanmar. Drawing on literatures on agency and "protection", we argue that forced migrants in and from Myanmar demonstrate great resilience and significant social capital, and that external support should be geared towards aiding their own ongoing struggles to achieve dignity and "durable solutions" to their plight.

The article describes eight main types of conflict-induced forced migration in southeast Myanmar, determined largely by forced migrants' coping mechanisms in the context of hardship and abuse. Five main factors are further identified which influence these different types of forced migrants in their current decisions around return or resettlement and thus help us to understand the role of local agency in the changing context.

Forced migration in southeast Myanmar has been driven to a large extent by the counter-insurgency strategy of the Myanmar Armed Forces (Tatmadaw), raising questions of the potential role of the state as a legitimate protection actor. Meanwhile, international assistance has been limited due to a lack of access to conflict-affected areas, meaning that external actors have also failed to provide adequate protection. Many displaced communities continue to rely on Ethnic Armed Groups (EAGs) and their associated networks for humanitarian support and social services. But these actors too can be compromised in their effectiveness as protectors by their lack of capacity, and their conflicting political, personal, economic or other agendas. Furthermore, civilians living under their influence are often saddled with increased attacks and harassment by the state.

This lack of institutionalized protection demonstrates clearly the importance of understanding how communities protect themselves and relate to external actors. This is of particular significance at present in southeast Myanmar, where ceasefires between the government and seven local EAGs were signed in 2011 and 2012. These deals have created a degree of stability in the region, despite a wide range of ongoing security issues related to continued militarization. Additionally, decreases in violent conflict have allowed greater space for economic development actors, including the government, to expand agribusiness and extractive resources developments and to construct multiple roads, leading to significant land confiscation and damage to local livelihoods. (1) In this context, thousands of forced migrants have begun tentative moves either to return to previous locations (particularly where they still have claims to farmland) and/ or move to new in-country resettlement sites.

Globally, the literature and policy discourse on protection of forced migrants and other victims of conflict and humanitarian disasters has focused on the role of external actors and their responsibility to intervene. However, there is a growing body of work exploring the importance of such forced migrants' own protection strategies, which we discuss below. This article aims to add to this body of literature. We demonstrate how "peace processes" and the rehabilitation of civilian victims of armed conflict are far more complex than simple transitions back to a pre-war status quo, and involve long and complex (and often contested) processes of deliberation.

Background: Conflict, Peace and Humanitarian Impacts in Southeast Myanmar (2)

Myanmar is home to more than 100 ethno-linguistic groups, and according to the 2014 census, has a population of over 51 million. Non-Burman communities make up at least 30 per cent of the population. Ethnic armed conflict has plagued southeast Myanmar--which borders Thailand, and encompasses Tanintharyi Region, Mon State, Kayin State, eastern Bago Region, Kayah State and southern Shan State--for over sixty-five years.

In the lead-up to independence in 1948, ethnic nationality (3) elites mobilized communities in order to gain access to political and economic resources, demanding justice and fair treatment for the groups they sought to represent. During the late 1940s, there were widespread outbreaks of violence, following the failure of Burman and minority elites to successfully negotiate a transition to independence, based on mutual tolerance and collaboration. By the time the Karen National Union (KNU) went underground in January 1949, the country had entered into a civil war that has lasted more than six decades. The ensuing armed conflict has been marked by serious and widespread human rights abuses on the part of both the Tatmadaw and, less systematically, EAGs. (4)

For more than half-a-century, rural areas populated by ethnic minority populations have been affected by conflicts between ethnic insurgents and a militarized state widely perceived as having been captured by elements of the ethnic Burman (Bama) majority. Myanmar's ethnic insurgents have been fighting a protracted armed conflict, in order to achieve self-determination (that in recent years has been framed as a desire for federal autonomy within a multiethnic Union], against a centralizing government identified with a chauvinistic majority bent on forcibly assimilating the country's diverse minority communities. (5)

For decades, communist and dozens of ethnic insurgents controlled large parts of the country. Since the 1970s, however, armed opposition groups have lost control of their once extensive "liberated zones", precipitating further humanitarian and political crises in the borderlands. A previous round of ceasefires in the 1990s brought considerable respite to conflict-affected civilian populations. These truces (twenty-five agreements in total) provided the space for some conflict-affected communities to begin the long process of recovery, and for civil society networks to (re)emerge within, and between, ethnic nationality communities. However, the then-military government proved unwilling to accept ethnic nationality representatives' political demands for substantial political discussions resulting in significant autonomy agreements. Therefore, despite some positive developments, the ceasefires of the 1990s did not dispel distrust between ethnic nationalists and the government.

Protracted armed conflict, and particularly the Myanmar Army's "four cuts" (pya-ley-pya) counter-insurgency campaigns, have destroyed lives and disrupted communities, especially in ethnic nationality-populated areas. The four cuts strategy was developed to deny insurgent organizations access to civilian communities and support by forcibly moving the latter out of "black" areas where they could support the insurgents and into "white" government-controlled areas where they could not. Contested or mixed authority areas were designated "brown". On some occasions, "brown" or "black" areas were designated "free-fire zones", and civilians were forced to flee for fear of detention, summary execution or other forms of violence. (6)

The hundreds of thousands of people who moved into white areas during decades of (often "low intensity") armed conflict were typically ordered to set up new settlements, or construct extensions to existing ones near military camps and towns. These new settlements and extensions have typically been called relocation sites. Others moved into government-controlled areas by choice following displacement, to wherever they calculated that they had the best chance of survival, usually to existing villages or towns unaffected by conflict.

Hundreds of thousands of others moved into areas under the authority of EAGs or across the border, to seek refuge in neighbouring countries where EAGs were instrumental in establishing refugee camps through negotiation with the Thai authorities. In later years, the camps came under the authority of the Thai security establishment, and the levels of assistance provided by international aid actors increased. The "choice" (if it can be termed thus), to flee into EAG-controlled areas or to refugee camps under the partial administration of EAG-established bodies or to government-controlled areas depends in part on local networks of association, and the kinds of relationship which vulnerable civilians have with state/Tatmadaw and EAG/ethnic national civil society power-holders. (7) Others will opt to stay close to home, attempting to maintain access to their farmlands, even if they cannot maintain a sedentary presence. Such strategies leave large numbers of forced migrants in a state of limbo for decades, uncommitted to new locations and intent on returning.

The dynamics of forced migration have undergone profound changes in southeast Myanmar since 2012, following the signing of bilateral ceasefires between seven of the region's EAGs and the government: the Karen National Union (KNU), the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA), the KNU/KNLA-Peace Council (KNU-PC), the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), the New Mon State Party (NMSP), the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and the Pa-o National Liberation Organization (PNLO). Negotiations appear to have brought about the best opportunity in decades to address political, social, economic and cultural issues which have driven conflict since independence. But while talks have brought together long-standing antagonists, and have been marked by a spirit of dialogue absent throughout previous decades, success will depend on the creation of a binding political agreement that deals with deep constitutional issues.

As of June 2015, a coalition of EAGs from across Myanmar are involved in negotiations with the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT), a joint negotiation team composed of government, parliamentary and high-ranking Tatmadaw officials. Other EAGs, including the large and influential Shan and Wa...