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Journal of Special Operations Medicine, 2017
The Back Pack Health Worker Team (BPHWT), a community- based health organization, provides primary health care to ethnic people in conflict, remote, and internally displaced areas, in Burma (aka Myanmar), controlled by ethnic armed organizations fighting against the Burma government. Its services include both curative and preventative health care through a network of 1,425 health personnel including community health workers and village-embedded traditional birth attendants and village health workers. The BPHWT organizational and program model may prove useful to Special Operations medical actions in support of insurgent movements and conversely with a host nation''s counterinsurgency strategies, which include the extension of its health services into areas that may be remote and/or inhabited by indigenous people and have insurgency potential. In the former respect, special attention is directed toward "humanitarian struggle" that uses health care as a weapon against the counterinsurgency strategies of a country's oppressive military.
Social Science & Medicine, 2014
The journal of Burma studies, 2014
World Development, 2020
Acta Bio Medica : Atenei Parmensis, 2021
BMJ Global Health
This case study analyses a health project that focused on peacebuilding in addition to service provision, and the impacts of this dual focus in contested territories of Southeast Myanmar. The Swiss-funded Primary Health Care Project provided equal funds to both ‘sides’ in a decades-long conflict, and brought people together in ways designed to build trust. The case study demonstrates that health can play a valuable role in peace formation, if relationships are engineered in a politically sensitive way, at the right time. Whereas much of the literature on ‘health as a bridge to peace’ focuses on the apolitical in health, here the explicitly political approach and the deliberate adoption of neutrality as a tool for engaging with different parties were what enabled health to contribute to peace, using a political window of opportunity created by ceasefires and the beginnings of democratic transition in Myanmar. We argue that this approach was essential for health to contribute to botto...
(Excerpt) The people of Burma, in Southeast Asia, (now known as Myanmar) have been victims of a sixty year civil war. One ethnic group in particular, the Karen, are of interest and will be the main focus of this paper. Fuertes (2010) points out the country of Burma was renamed Myanmar, however the Karen choose not to use this name as it lends credibility to the Burmese army who were responsible for renaming the country, as well as other cities within Burma . The Karen people have been fighting against the Burmese Army in an attempt to get their country back and thousands of lives have been lost. Approximately 150 to 200 years ago there was fighting among the Burmese and the British Army. The Karen people felt they could trust the British and had confidence the British Empire would assist their country in separating from Burma (Kenny and Lockwood-Kenny, 2011). The Karen people formed the Karen National Union (KNU) and acted as a de facto government. The native Burmese army pushed the Karen people into the hills of Burma during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Kenny and Lockwood-Kenny (2011) report there have been numerous human rights offenses against the Karen people, continuing today.
Third World Quarterly, 2020
This article explores ‘health as a bridge to peace’ in Myanmar’s Kayin State. It focuses on an Auxiliary Midwife training programme, which has created partnerships between actors historically divided by decades-long conflict. Drawing on ethnographic research, the article highlights the agency of community-level service providers, who are often overlooked in conventional approaches to peacebuilding. It demonstrates that community health workers are challenging top-down liberal approaches to peacebuilding and advancing an alternative approach to development and peace in their areas – one that emphasises systemic change and recognition of non-state governance systems. The shared lexicon and standardised practices of healthcare create ‘working encounters’ – encounters that ‘work’, because they enable actors historically divided by conflict to carve out an ‘apolitical’ space in an otherwise highly politicised context, while still allowing for different perspectives and agendas. These ‘wo...
Fears that ‘refugee warriors’ will use refugee camps as a base for military operations, exploit a wider refugee population, or misuse international aid have led to the development of policies intended to ensure the separation of combatants and civilian refugee populations. However, a dogmatic approach to that policy goal may miss the true complexity of both refugee protection and the relationships between a refugee population and a military group. This article examines an alternative possibility, that a non-state armed group may be a potential partner in refugee protection and welfare promotion. It draws on the experiences of refugees from Burma living in camps in Thailand, where there has been a long-standing connection between camp governance structures and a political/military organization movement, the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army. While camp governance activities have been flawed, they have also displayed a high level of integrity. It is argued that in such a situation, where there is a proven record of working to improve civilian welfare, international organizations might usefully explore possibilities of engagement with non-state armed groups as partners in refugee protection, with the specific goal of encouraging a more representative, accountable, and democratic approach to governance.
2011
In this article, I demonstrate that the Karen National Union (KNU) was able to manipulate and politicise humanitarian aid in the Thailand-Burma borderland. I contend that in the context of the civil war in eastern Burma, Protestant Christianity provides a crucial vehicle for political mobilisation. The article shows that refugee camps in the Thai borderland become centres of proselytisation, and that Protestant evangelical and missionary networks open up passages across the Thai-Burmese border. The article thus considers a case where a homeland is constructed in the liminal space between two nations. Illegal emergency aid that doubles as missionary project reinforces the image of a helpless victim being vandalized by evil Burmese army.
Rico G. Monge, Kerry P. C. San Chirico, and Rachel J. Smith, eds, Hagiography and Religious Truth: Case Studies in the Abrahamic and Dharmic Traditions
Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 2017
Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology, 2023
Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, 2009
Social Service Review, 2013
Contextos da Alimentação - Revista de Comportamento, Cultura e Sociedade., 2023
arXiv (Cornell University), 2014
International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), 2023
Acta Biochimica Polonica, 2010
FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 2010
حولیة کلیة اللغة العربیة بالزقازیق – جامعة الأزهر, 2014
Дамініканскі ордэн на беларускіх землях Вялікага Княства Літоўскага ў айчыннай гістарыяграфіі канца ХХ – пачатку ХХІ ст., 2024