By Thompson Chau and Guy Dinmore
BANGKOK, Feb 21 2023 – Nearly 18 million people – about one-third of Myanmar’s population – need humanitarian aid this year because of civil war and the post-coup economic crisis, according to the latest United Nations estimates.

The numbers needing support continue to rise from the estimated 14 million people needing aid last year. More than 10,000 people were displaced by fighting in southern Kayin State in early January alone, joining more than 1.5 million IDPs across the country.

The UN says it recognises the urgent need to remain in Myanmar and step up humanitarian operations, but it is caught between a hostile military junta imposing restrictions on its activities and a loose network of resistance groups accusing the world body of legitimising an illegal regime.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is also facing increasing criticism for his apparent hands-off leadership in the crisis.

“Almost 18 million people – nearly one-third of the Myanmar population – are estimated to be in humanitarian need nationwide in 2023, with conflict continuing to threaten the lives of civilians in many parts of the country,” said Ramanathan Balakrishnan, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Myanmar.

He told IPS that international and local humanitarian aid organisations are “using a range of approaches” in different areas and had reached over four million people in 2022 despite severe underfunding and what he called “heavy bureaucratic and access constraints”.

Balakrishnan defended the importance of the UN’s engagement with General Min Aung Hlaing’s regime, which has ruthlessly crushed dissent since seizing power two years ago and overthrowing the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

“Principled engagement with all sides is a must to negotiate access and also to advocate on key protection issues. Advocacy to stop the heavy fighting and airstrikes in populated areas that are threatening the safety of both civilians and aid workers is as important as reaching people in need with humanitarian aid,” he said.

Aid workers accuse the junta of further restricting aid operations and blocking urgently needed aid from reaching millions of people. The regime admitted this month it cannot effectively administer about one-third of Myanmar’s townships. But it is able to choke access to some areas controlled by resistance groups and ethnic armed organisations that have been fighting the military for decades.

The junta is seeking to impose its authority with a new law making registration compulsory for national and international non-governmental organizations and associations and introducing criminal penalties for non-registered entities with up to five years of imprisonment.

“Civic space has been decimated in the country already due to the military’s actions, particularly its systematic harassment, arrest, and prosecution of anyone who opposed their coup,” said James Rodehaver, chief of the UN Human Rights Office for South-East Asia (OHCHR) Myanmar Team. “These new rules could greatly diminish what operational space is left for civic organisations to deliver essential goods and services to a population that is struggling to survive.”

Muslim Rohingya IDPs wait for aid to be unloaded in Pawktaw camp in Rakhine State, an hour by boat from the main city of Sittwe. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Many of the more than one million refugees outside Myanmar also need help. Most are stateless Rohingya Muslims forced out of Rakhine State into Bangladesh in waves of ethnic cleansing before the 2021 coup, with many held in border camps.

The UN’s reputation was already battered before the coup over its handling of the long-festering Rohingya crisis in which it was accused by aid workers and activists of being too accommodating with the Myanmar military. And it has come under further fire since.

In a joint letter last September, more than 600 Burmese civil society organisations said they “condemn in the strongest terms the recent public signing of new agreements and presenting of letters of appointment to the illegitimate Myanmar military junta by UN agencies, funds, programmes and other entities working inside Myanmar.”

“We call on you and all UN entities to immediately cease all forms of cooperation and engagement that lends legitimacy to the illegal, murderous junta,” said the letter addressed to the UN Secretary-General. The signatories argued that letters of appointment and agreements should be presented to what they regard as the legitimate government of Myanmar – the parallel National Unity Government established by ousted lawmakers – and “ethnic revolutionary organisations.”

A Myanmar researcher specialising in civil society and international assistance highlighted the role of Burmese CSOs in delivering aid. “Local CSOs comprehend the complexity of specific local needs in the current crisis as the communities they serve struggle with security concerns and essential public services, including healthcare and education,” said the researcher, who goes by the name Kyaw Swar for fear of security reprisals.

He said that donors and foreign organisations had adopted risk aversion arrangements post-coup, referring to UN and INGO’s costs for capacity-building components and disproportionate country-office operations. “Local CSOs have fewer operations, and risk management options [and] have no choice but to channel international aid to their respective communities.”

UN officials reject the notion that they are legitimising the regime and insist that only by operating in the junta-controlled heartland and also through cross-border assistance can aid be delivered to a substantial part of the population in desperate need.

“The UN finds itself in an almost existential bind. It can’t engage with an oppressive regime without being seen to condone its actions,” commented Charles Petrie, former UN Assistant Secretary-General and former UN chief in Myanmar.

“Somehow, the UN’s senior leadership needs to convince all that engaging in a dialogue with a pariah regime is not the same as supporting it and that it should be judged on the outcome of the discussions rather than being condemned for the simple fact of engaging,” he said.

“But being able to do so successfully implies that it has the level of credibility that right now it still needs to rebuild,” he added.

Questions have also been raised about the apparent lack of hands-on leadership on the part of Guterres. The UN Secretary-General seems to have made little personal intervention beyond routine statements, such as the latest marking the second anniversary of the coup in which he condemned “all forms of violence” and said he “continues to stand in solidarity with the people of Myanmar and to support their democratic aspirations for an inclusive, peaceful and just society and the protection of all communities, including the Rohingya.”

Since the coup and despite the unfolding humanitarian crisis, Guterres is seen as having taken a back seat and delegating to two successive special envoys. This stands in contrast to his predecessor Ban Ki-moon who actively intervened during the Cyclone Nargis disaster in 2008, personally meeting then-junta leader General Than Shwe and negotiating the opening of Myanmar to aid workers.

Petrie suggested Guterres should take a page out of Ban’s book and provide much more active leadership on Myanmar and be “more openly engaged and supportive of the work done by his special envoy.”

While China and Russia lend military and other support to the junta, much of the rest of the diplomatic world has taken a step back from the Myanmar crisis, leaning instead on ASEAN to assume the lead.

But the 10-member bloc has been ineffective so far. It has coordinated an unprecedented shunning of the junta’s leadership in regional meetings, but neighbouring countries – with their own blemished democratic records – are unwilling to penalise the regime. The ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre) has been charged to respond to the humanitarian crisis, but with no success.

Laetitia van den Assum, the former Dutch ambassador to Myanmar and Thailand, said the aid response would have been more effective if ASEAN had set up a partnership between AHA and experienced UN and other organisations.

“That, in fact, is what happened in the aftermath of Nargis, when under the strong leadership of Dr Surin Pitsuwan, ASEAN and UN worked in tandem. It took time to put the effort together, but ultimately it took off,” van den Assum told IPS.

As with the UN leadership, Lim Jock Hoi, a Bruneian government official who was ASEAN chief until December, was barely noticed on the issue of Myanmar, in stark contrast to Pitsuwan, who helped persuade Than Shwe to accept humanitarian assistance in 2008 when Cyclone Nargis killed over 100,000 people.

“UN agencies like OCHA, WFP and UNICEF, as well as many dedicated INGOs, continue to provide assistance, more often than not under difficult circumstances, and with countless Myanmar civil society organisations playing critical roles,” Van den Assum observed.

“But until now, the SAC [the junta’s State Administration Council] has stood in the way of more effective aid,” she added. “What is missing is an overall agreement between Myanmar and ASEAN about such assistance, how to expand it and how to guarantee that all those in need are served. ASEAN and AHA have not been able to deliver on this.”

Observers point out that AHA is set up to respond to natural disasters and has no experience in intervening with aid in conflict situations.

“That had already become clear in 2018 when AHA was tasked to make recommendations for ASEAN assistance to northern Rakhine state after the enforced deportation of more than 750,000 Rohingya. The initiative died a slow death,” Van den Assum said.

“AHA was not to blame. Rather, ASEAN politicians had taken a decision without first considering whether it was the most advisable approach,” the veteran diplomat said.

No breakthrough is in sight. The junta has extended a state of emergency for another six months, admitting that it lacks control over many areas for the new elections it says it wants to stage but which have already been widely denounced by the resistance as a sham.

“Heavy fighting, including airstrikes, tight security, access restrictions, and threats against aid workers have continued unabated, particularly in the Southeast, endangering lives and hampering humanitarian operations,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in its latest update.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Feb 21 2023 – Harassing Palestinians, vandalizing their cars and houses, occupying their lands: Gilad Sade, a 36-year-old Israeli, recalls his day-to-day life when he belonged to a Jewish supremacist organization.

“He boasted that he kept them away from the streets and drugs but actually paid them cash to commit these kinds of crimes. The boys sought the approval of the group by spitting on the Palestinians, pushing them to the ground, pepper-spraying them,” he recalls

“I was first jailed at thirteen and would go back to prison many times. During those years, Itamar Ben Gvir and I were thick and thin,” Sade tells IPS from Rome, Italy.

Itamar Ben Gvir is Israel´s newly appointed Minister of National Security.

His party, Jewish Power, won six seats in the November 2022 legislative elections. Today, it forms a far-right government considered the most extremist in the country’s history, led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Raised in a family of secular Jewish immigrants from Iraq, Ben Gvir, 47, joined the Kach movement —an ultra-Orthodox organization designated as a terrorist group in the nineties by Israel, the US, the European Union, Canada and Japan— as a teenager. In 1995 he became famous for threatening then-Prime Minister Isaac Rabin three weeks before he was assassinated.

“When he first moved out of his family house, he hung a photo of Barouch Goldstein in his new residence in Kiryat Arba,110 kilometres southeast of Tel Aviv,” recalls Sade. Also known as the “Butcher of Hebron,” Goldstein was a medical doctor from New York who murdered 29 Palestinians with an assault rifle in 1994.

Sade recalls that, as a child, he was often in the care of Ben Gvir. He was in primary school when he received his first assignment.

“We used to distribute leaflets calling for the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel or the demolition of the al Aqsa Mosque. Ben Gvir asked me to hide them under my shirt. As a child, the police would not search me.”

A school day in Hebron, one of the cities hardest hit by violence in Israel Credit: Mikel Ayestaran.

At the age of 14, Ben Gvir asked him to bring a ski mask and handed him a wire cutter to break into the United Nations compound in Jerusalem to vandalize UN cars and spray anti-UN graffiti on walls.

“He would never take risks. I could easily get in trouble or even get killed while he waited in his car listening to Hasidic music,” says Sade

Ben Gvir, he explains, recruited young people from broken families. “He boasted that he kept them away from the streets and drugs but actually paid them cash to commit these kinds of crimes. The boys sought the approval of the group by spitting on the Palestinians, pushing them to the ground, pepper-spraying them,” he recalls.

Contrary to what one might think, Sade says that there was no room for improvisation. “They trained us to deal with all sorts of situations: from occupying the home of a Palestinian family to handle a police interrogation,” explains Sade.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 7, Ben Gvir said he had been arrested “hundreds of times” — the first time at 14 —and bragged about having been accused “in only just eight occasions.” At 18, his criminal record exempted him from military service.

Before launching his political career, he was convicted for “incitement to racism and support of terror,” by calling for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel.

“Today he has moderated his speech, at least in public, in order to reach parliament. But everyone knows that he is still the same racist influencer he´s always been,” says Sade.

Sade quit the extremist movement at 21.

“It was a very long and painful process to be able to overcome, among other things, the hatred towards myself for the damage inflicted,” he admits. He also regrets that many of his former colleagues “did not manage to break the walls of that mental prison.”

36-year old Gilad Sade has been forced to live in exile by threats he constantly receives from Israeli far-right movements. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza

Sade would become an adventure travel guide, and his fondness for photography would open the doors to journalism. As a freelance reporter working for both Israeli and international media, he works in places like Nagorno Karabakh and Kosovo. However, part of his job has focused on exposing those who, he insists, ruined his life and the lives of hundreds of young people.

But the price to pay was exile. The frequent target of threats, he cannot return to Israel. Especially today, when those who were his mentors are in power.

Itamar ben Gvir ‘s spokesman declined to answer to questions forwarded by IPS. He told this news agency that any accusation of hate crimes against the minister is “not serious” and “just jihadist propaganda.”

Domination

Last November, weeks before the new government was formed, Palestinian Authority officials warned that Itamar Ben Gvir´s appointment could have a “potentially catastrophic impact.”

Their concern appears to have been well-founded. In a report released by Amnesty International on February 1, the London-based NGO denounced the death of 35 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces during January alone.

“The killings help sustain the Israeli apartheid regime and constitute crimes against humanity as well as other measures such as administrative detention or forced displacement,” the Amnesty report said.

On January 27, seven people were killed in a synagogue and a dozen seriously injured in two attacks on Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. Two weeks later, two Israelis were killed, including one child, in an intentional car-ram attack in Jerusalem.

The recent violence under the new administration continues a worrying trend. In its World Report 2023, Human Right Watch points to “a policy to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians” under a new government which, the New York based NGO underlines, “includes Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted by an Israeli court for incitement to racism and support of a terrorist organization.”

Show of force in Jerusalem during Israel’s Independence Day. Credit: Mikel Ayestaran.

For Alberto Spectorowsky, an Uruguayan-Israeli citizen and professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, the current climate of violence in the country is related to corruption charges against the prime minister.

“There is a conflict unleashed between those who defend a democracy with liberal institutions and those who want to take away the power and independence of the Court of Justice,” Spectorowsky told IPS from Tel Aviv over the phone.

The current prime minister was sworn into office immersed in an open process for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. “Without this pending trial, Netanyahu would be another defender of liberal democracy,” claims the political scientist.

As for Ben Gvir, Spectorowsky points to “an open scenario”:

“Netanyahu has no interest in setting the Middle East on fire, and that is why he tries to contain Ben Gvir. However, the latter announced that he will leave the coalition if they take away his authority,” the expert underlines.

In an interview given to Israeli Channel 12, on February 4, the senior minister gave the government a period of three months to implement measures such as the death penalty for terrorists or the creation of a security body made up of armed civilians.

“As long as I continue to have influence, I will not overthrow the government,” said Ben Gvir. His most recent measure has been to increase by 400% the number of weapons permits that can be granted monthly.

Sade believes Ben Gvir is seeking to create his own armed militia.

“Now he wants to arm everyone to contain these attacks, which, however, have increased since he took office,” he adds. “What could you possibly expect from a country whose National Security minister asked me and others to commit hate crimes?”

Israel has become a trap, he says, “not only for the Palestinians, but also for anyone who thinks differently.”

By Juliana Nnoko-Mewanu and Oryem Nyeko
NAIROBI, Feb 21 2023 – Tanzania’s policies on conservation and its ongoing impacts on Maasai people in Ngorongoro district highlight how communities historically marginalized by oppression still wrestle with colonial policies.

When colonial authorities declared the Serengeti area a national park in 1951, communities within its borders were relocated to Ngorongoro district for permanent settlement. But for the past half-century, these communities have continued to face numerous evictions even from these regions, while new regulations have curtailed their rights to graze cattle and cultivate subsistence gardens.

The government’s resettlement plan will forcibly displace people in these herder communities from Ngorongoro district, Arusha region, to Handeni district, Tanga region, about 600 kilometers away, with little or no consultation

Currently, the government plans to displace about 150,000 pastoralists for its conservation initiatives in two areas in Ngorongoro district, Loliondo Game Controlled Area and Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA).

In June 2022, security forces and Maasai violently clashed in Loliondo during a land demarcation exercise, which restricts the people’s access to grazing sites, water sources, and in some places cuts across their homes. The government had decided without consultation with affected communities to convert the area to a game reserve.

What happened in Loliondo in June is a continuation of the government’s forcible displacement of these communities. Loliondo is the tip of the iceberg, and Ngorongoro Conservation Area illustrates the government’s pervasive efforts to forcibly relocate Maasai people by reducing basic services and restricting movement into the area.

South of Loliondo, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site since 1979, spans vast areas of highland plains, savanna, savanna woodlands, forests, and includes the spectacular Ngorongoro Crater.

It adjoins the Serengeti National Park and is part of the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem in functioning as wildlife corridors essential to protecting animal migrations. Colonial authorities established the conservation area in 1959 as a multiple land use area, with wildlife coexisting with Maasai traditional pastoralists. It is managed by the NCA Authority, supervised by the Natural Resources and Tourism Ministry.

Semi-nomadic Maasai pastoralists have lived, used, and managed the area alongside other native communities for over 200 years. They grow corn, beans, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes, and graze cows, sheep, and goats, requiring large areas of rangeland as pasture for their animals.

The Maasai strive to live harmoniously with wildlife and their customs, such as taboos on consuming wildlife meat instead of beef and cutting down a live tree instead of using its branches, and traditional rules on managing grazing areas, promote conservation of their natural resources. Their cultural and spiritual practices are interwoven with the land, with sacred areas for assemblies to teach young Maasai about their culture and how they live with the ecosystem around them.

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area’s most recent plan from 1996 has primary objectives to conserve natural resources, protect the interests of the Maasai pastoralists, and to promote tourism. However, since the creation of the conservation area, the Maasai population has increased through natural population growth, resulting in an increased need for land and resources.

The government has used this to justify a new land-use model that expands the conservation area to include parts of Loliondo Game Controlled Areas, an adjacent park, and to relocate about 82,000 residents by 2027.

The government’s resettlement plan will forcibly displace people in these herder communities from Ngorongoro district, Arusha region, to Handeni district, Tanga region, about 600 kilometers away, with little or no consultation. Media have reported that up to 500 residents and 2,000 livestock have been moved to Msomera village in Handeni district since the relocation began on June 16.

Residents told us that the government downsized important health and education services beginning in February. Services in these areas were already less developed than in other areas, with lower health and education outcomes than national figures.

In February, the government grounded Flying Medical Services, a medical outreach service provider, and in October, announced that it would downgrade Endulen Hospital, the area’s main hospital, to a dispensary, reducing staff from 64 to 2. The government has also moved funding to schools to Handeni.

The government’s downsizing directly interferes with the communities’ ability to continue living in the area. It could have particularly devastating results in emergencies, including for pregnant women, and violates residents’ right to health and education.

UNESCO has pointed out that it did not recommend displacing the Maasai. Instead, a UNESCO committee recommended that “there is the need for an equitably governed consultative process to identify long term sustainable interdisciplinary solutions … with participation of all rightsholders and stakeholders, consistent with international norms.”

United Nations experts have also said the government should halt forced evictions and relocation. They urged the government to work with affected communities to evaluate challenges to conservation in the area, and design a plan that meets the needs of the local communities as well as conservation.

The displacement of Maasai in northern Tanzania needs to stop. The government should consult affected communities and ensure that they and their representatives have access to relevant information prior to consultation to obtain their free, prior, and informed consent, consistent with international standards, to any changes to conservation management plans.

Human Rights Watch’s written request to the government for further information did not get a response.

Excerpt:

Juliana Nnoko-Mewanu is a senior researcher on women and land and Oryem Nyeko is the Tanzania researcher at Human Rights Watch