The situation of internally displaced people (IDPs), in Burma remained critical throughout 2002. The U.S. State Department’s country report for 2002 on Burma estimated that forced relocations had produced hundreds of thousands of refugees, with as many as one million internally displaced persons.

According to the US Committee for Refugees, there are more than 450,000 Burmese refugees and asylum seekers in countries neighboring Burma. Driven out by the ruling military regimes unrelenting policies and practices that violate their human rights, refugees and aylum seekers have fled to Thailand, Bangladesh, India and Malaysia.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:-
1. Food Security from a Rights-based Perspective;
2. Local Observations from the States and Divisions
of Eastern Burma:-
2.1 Tenasserim Division
(Committee for Internally Displaced Karen Persons);
2.2 Mon State (Mon Relief and Development Committee);
2.3 Karen State (Karen Human Rights Group)

...In the last four years, the Burmese army based in Mon State has confiscated thousands acres of farmland. The farmers whose land had been confiscated were not given any compensation. They have no opportunity to take legal actions against the army. As a result, many farmers who lost their lands left to Thailand to seek employment.

Unofficial translation (by UNICEF)

Historically underdeveloped and divided, Burma today is politically isolated, increasingly militarised, economically mismanaged by its own authorities, and socially and culturally divided along ethnic, religious, and language lines.

KHRG Information Update #2003-U1
June 16, 2003

THIS report is based on research undertaken by AFRA in 2002/3. The process of compiling the information included an extensive literature review, workshops with the forest dwellers and interviews with various stakeholders. A number of issues were considered and a large volume of literature and workshop reports on these exists in AFRA's offices. These are available on request.

Final report of the Special Rapporteur, Mr. David Weissbrodt,
submitted in accordance with Sub-Commission decision 2000/103,
Commission resolution 2000/104 and Economic and Social Council
decision 2000/283
Addendum
Summary of Comments Received from U.N. Member States to

1. Introduction 1;
2. Historical Context and Current Implications of the State Taking Control
of People, Land and Livelihood 2;
2.1. Under the Democratically Elected Government 2;
2.1.1. The Land Nationalization Act 1953 2;
2.1.2. The Agricultural Lands Act 1953 2;
3. Under the Revolutionary Council (1962-1974) 2;
3.1. The Tenancy Act 1963 3;

Mass Displacement by the Burmese Army's forced relocation program in Tenasserim division first rose to awareness when multi-national companies started to build the Yadana gas pipeline. What followed was a Burmese Army offensive in 1997 to KNU controlled areas to secure more of the area for their business interests.

Burma has a population of 50 million people, recent estimates place 2 million of those people as Internally Displaced
Persons (IDP). They live precarious and transient lives in the jungles of Burma’s ethnic border areas and in the more urban
central plains. They are denied the stability of having a home and a livelihood and are forced into a constant state of