Implication of Myanmar Political Transitions on IDPs’ Access to Land and Their Human Security in Karenni State

Abstract

Myanmar’s politics has dramatically transited to pragmaticism under the civilian government in 2011. The political transition was initiated with the positive outcomes that aimed to bring the human security for its citizens. The government has conducted peace building processes with many ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) around Myanmar. Peace building processes have reduced human rights abuses and provided peace in some ethnic minority states. Among them, Karenni State was one of the longstanding conflicts affected areas that has engaged with the peace building process with the Myanmar government in 2012. Peace building process in Karenni State especially provides hopes for the Internally Displaced Person (IDPs). The IDPs in Karenni State have embraced the voluntary resettlement and return process in order to access the land while the peace process is ongoing. This thesis has studied the broadened dimension of the Myanmar’s peace building process at the grassroots level in Karenni State. The concept of political transition is provided to understand the root causes of the ethnic armed conflicts. Moreover, the concept of human security analyzes how the state actors provide the human security to its citizens. This thesis also examines the development of new land laws under the Myanmar political transition and its implications on the IDP’s access to land. Theory of access is used to conceptualize the right based access and structural and relation-based access to land of the Karenni IDPs. Qualitative research method whereby the empirical data driven from the ethnographic field research along with the various data collection methods such as interviews and participant observation has been employed. Analysis of the responses have demonstrated that the peace building process in Karenni State is deadlocked due to lack of trust, incapability of peace negotiators, violation of the bilateral agreement, misuse of the power and high centralization. Additionally, the implication of reformed land laws, lack of rule of laws and lack of recognition of the ethnic customary land laws provides human insecurities for the Karenni IDPs. Although Myanmar’s political transition and recent reform of land laws has brought solutions to some areas, this study has found that the solutions do not positively work for the Karenni IDPs in terms of access to land. Two IDPs villages of Daw Klaw Le village and Daw So Shay village have shown the distinction of human security and the way to access the land based on the extent of state actor’s predomination. Hence, this thesis has argued that the state’s predomination on the IDPs’ access to land agenda is threatening to IDP’s livelihood security; hence, the state’s move fails to bring human security to these IDPs.