Some Afghan women put their lives at risk by migrating to Europe. Along the way, and even at the destinations, they face sexual violence at the hands of traffickers, but they often take the risk so that they can live free from the constraints of the Taliban. This photo shows a woman from the Hazara minority in Bamiyan. She used to be a singer and appeared on local TV but is now forced to stay at home. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By Sara Perria
KABUL & ATHENS, Dec 22 2022 (IPS)

Maliha looks confident in a café in Athens as she tells the story of her journey from Afghanistan to Europe. But as she starts recounting how a smuggler assaulted her in Turkey two years ago, she pauses, looking the other way and fiddling with her loose hair.

It makes her anxious when she remembers it. She was traveling alone and soon realized she was the only woman on board a bus to the border with Greece.

“[The smuggler] told me to get off. He wanted me to himself.” With unusual strength, the young woman managed to escape as the man was trying to rape her. Still shaken, she tried to report the crime to the local police, but she felt they were more concerned about her status as an illegal migrant than the attempted rape. “Luckily, I had a contact on Facebook [who is] a cousin who I knew lived in Turkey but whom I never met.” He happened to live near that police station, and he convinced the officials to let her go.

Afghan refugees picnic in a park in Athens. Their journeys to Europe are often dangerous. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Now Maliha lives in Athens as a “free woman” – a fact that she remarks upon while wearing leggings and no head covering.

The violence experienced by Mahila is not an isolated case. An investigation into the journey of Afghan women from their home country to Europe carried out in Afghanistan, Turkey and Greece has revealed a pattern of systematic violence throughout, their vulnerability heightened by lack of documents and money. Women, some traveling alone or only with their children, pay to get to Europe only to become victims of trafficking and sex slaves.

According to 31-year-old Aila, an Afghan refugee and former Médecins sans Frontières worker in refugee camps in Athens, “some 90% of women suffer a form of violence during the journey.”

“When your life is in the hands of smugglers,” continues Aila, “it’s not up to you to decide whom to stay with, what to do, where to go: it’s the smuggler who decides. Even if you are with your family or the members of your family, he can still threaten you with a weapon, and if he wants to separate you from them, he’ll do it”.

Afghans are now the second largest group of asylum seekers in the EU after Ukrainians, but the flow of asylum seekers started well before the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021. According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 77,000 women and girls were registered at arrival by sea and by land in Europe between 2018 and 2020, making up 20 percent of total arrivals. Women make up an increasing percentage of asylum requests globally, all facing gender-based risks.

The reasons behind Afghans’ search for a safe place run deep in a country torn by decades of war. Social and financial restrictions within a deeply patriarchal society and the hope for a better life abroad had already pushed many to leave the country even before the arrival of the Taliban.

However, the challenges of the journey can be harrowing. “I remember traveling with a 10-year-old and her grandmother,” Aila recalls. “During the journey, her grandmother died, and she was handed over to the trafficker,” says Aila, describing one of the most traumatic episodes she witnessed.

“Was she raped? Of course. For them, she was a woman”.

Women escaping from the increasingly restrictive Taliban regime in Afghanistan find their journeys to freedom are fraught with dangers. This week the Taliban banned women from universities. They are increasingly forced to remain at home. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

The risks are so stacked against women that word of mouth has led to the development of ‘survival’ techniques, such as dressing up as a man. Aila says she put on a similar short jacket, jeans, and sneakers to that of other boys. “I kept my hair hidden under my cap. And when the trafficker gave me his hand to get on the boat, he said, “Hey, boy.” I didn’t answer. “Never talk to traffickers,” is the second ‘tip’ dispensed by Aila.

Acceptance rates of Afghan asylum seekers are now high, especially in countries such as Spain and Italy, with 100% and 95% in 2021, respectively, and 80% in Greece, the first EU frontier for the many who come after spending months or years in Turkey or Iran.

Yet getting adequate assistance after suffering abuse, rape and forced prostitution is a different story. The violence suffered often doesn’t get denounced by the police due to cultural or linguistic barriers and the stigma surrounding rape or forced prostitution. Lack of adequate protection in Europe is also a reason, so NGOs set up by fellow Afghans try to step in.

Months of interviews with Afghan asylum seekers in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Europe expose the extent of the danger for women who embark on a journey organized by smugglers. Direct witnesses’ accounts and NGO transcripts, seen exclusively by this reporter, reveal a pattern of how women – and in particular Afghans belonging to ethnic minorities – fall into a ‘trap’ of violence.

Freshta spent years between Iran and Turkey with a sick brother before eventually succeeding in reaching a refugee camp in Greece and then a place in Athens hosted by a friend. However, her attempts to find a job and become independent soon turned into a prolonged series of tortured experiences. The possibility of asking for help was radically reduced by her illegal status and lack of documents.

“One day, I was in a café with my friend, and she introduced me to this man. We only knew that he was a trafficker of Iraqi nationality.” He, himself a refugee, knew very well how vulnerable women like Freshta are. “He started following me and kept saying that I should go with him.” Her constant rejections didn’t work. On the contrary, he threatened to kill her brother, who was still in the refugee camp – a sign of the long reach of influence traffickers can call upon.

One day, despite attempts to protect herself, hiding for days at a friend’s house, the man managed to kidnap her and take her to her apartment. He then hit her on the head, threatening her with a knife pointed at her stomach and forcing her to get into his car. At that moment, Freshta became a slave, first suffering violent rape, with beatings that made her pass out because she also suffered from asthma.

“When I woke up, he wasn’t there. I was full of pain and didn’t know what to do; I was in shock. I went to the bathroom, got washed, dressed, and cried.”

Upon his return, the trafficker told her that she now belonged to him. If she went out and told anyone what had happened, then he would kill her.

Freshta managed to hide at her friend’s again, but again the man managed to take her by force, beating her and locking her up at home for weeks, repeatedly raping her. Freshta got pregnant. “He told me I couldn’t do anything because he had become a Greek citizen, and I was nothing; I didn’t have any document.”

It took many weeks and the help of an association to allow her to report the incident. She had an abortion. The woman has since been moved by the Greek government to a secure facility in an undisclosed location.

To add to Freshta’s tragic testimony is the fact that, as the operator of an NGO in Athens explains, “There are many cases of sexual slavery like this, which are not reported by the victims because they are afraid of being stigmatized and of their lack of documents.” The perpetrators of the violence can be fellow nationals, generally belonging to a different ethnic group and, to a lesser extent, other nationalities.

The lack of support is accentuated by a form of class distinction within the refugee community and by the way resources are thus distributed, according to some of the Afghan women interviewed in Athens. “The refugees who arrived in Europe through the evacuation program [in Kabul] consider themselves ‘different’ from those who arrived here on foot, with the traffickers. And they are also treated differently by the authorities,” says Aila.

While for men, the lack of documents, money, and a family network leads more easily to labor exploitation, women can often fall victim to sexual exploitation. Some women are “passed from trafficker to trafficker,” says Aila, while the local association also reports cases of forced prostitution just outside the camps. But even in the aftermath of a violent attack, NGOs are worried about the short time women are allowed to spend in safe structures, as well as the limited space available there. Resources do not meet the seriousness and extent of the problem.

“When they asked me if I wanted to report the man [who kept me as a slave], I said yes, but only if I had a safe place to stay first,” says Freshta. “I was so desperate that I left behind everything I had.”

This project on trafficking has been developed with the financial support of Journalismfund.eu

https://www.journalismfund.eu/

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Viraj from India, in a squat where he has been living for three months near Velika Kladusa, Bosnia. He hopes to join family in Italy. February 2022. Credit: Chiara Luxardo

By Sara Perria
Bihać, Bosnia, Apr 19 2022 (IPS)

Responding to several shouts Viraj emerges from the ruins of his shelter in northwest Bosnia. He is originally from India but is now squatting near Bihać in what remains of a house abandoned since the 1990s Balkans war.

“I was in the bathroom,” says Viraj – although there is no such facility. The building doesn’t even have windows, just gaps exposed to a freezing wind. Collapsing walls are patched with planks. Steps leading up from the road that are not missing shake under the weight of the few people venturing there.

“It’s just us living here now,” adds Sidar, an Iraqi in his late 30s. “We prefer to stay here. People come and go, but we’ll stay until it’s a good moment to cross.”

The two men are among some 2,000 or so migrants waiting for the opportunity to play the so-called ‘game’: the hazardous challenge of evading Croatian police on the nearby border and entering their goal of the European Union, illegally. They often need several attempts to succeed. Many prefer to squat closer to the border for months until spring offers an easier route across mountains.

A long day’s walk away, basic services, health facilities and food are provided in camps for migrants managed by Bosnia and the UN. Yet hundreds like Viraj and Sidar have opted instead for abandoned houses, warehouses and factories fallen into disuse, or skeletons of unfinished buildings surrounded by trash, with open toilets and improvised kitchens. Away from the headlines, they also exist mostly under the radar of humanitarian agencies.

“There are too many migrants in the camps,” says Sidar, citing issues with drug dealers, violence and lack of freedom there. “We can go in and out of this house when we want. In the camps we only have a couple of hours, then we have to go back. There’s more freedom here.”

The kitchen of a squat near Bihać, Bosnia. February 2022. Credit: Chiara Luxardo

Life is a long wait for this migrant population transiting Bosnia. “I get up, eat something and watch a movie,” says Viraj. “Bollywood movies or action movies like Fast and Furious 5.”

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), very few request asylum in Bosnia, aiming instead for countries such as Germany, France or Italy. The Balkan route fell under the spotlight in 2015 during the so-called ‘long summer of migration’ when thousands of asylum seekers from Syria stretched Bosnia’s capacity as a ‘buffer zone’ and the IOM was put in charge of the camps, with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), a humanitarian non-profit organisation, running healthcare.

Seven years later, management is transitioning to Bosnian authorities, against the backdrop of a complex and fragmented local political structure. Numbers of migrants are much lower now, with occupancy in the formal camps around 1,840 against a capacity of over 5,200.

Almost 90% of migrants are single men, mostly from Pakistan and heading to Italy. But there are also growing numbers of Afghans and some Cubans, Iranians and Bangladeshis. They occupy settlements divided along ethnic lines and clashes are not uncommon, with one death registered this month. Threatening scrawls have appeared on the walls of some shelters.

Laura Lungarotti, IOM’s chief of mission in Bosnia, says the situation has evolved “tremendously” over the past year. Numbers are sharply down and camps have more capacity. For this reason, migration in Bosnia now needs “durable solutions, not emergency ones.” Solutions come from the “inclusion of migrants in the health system, with resources dedicated to migrants used for the local population,” she says. But achieving this balance is not easy as long as many stay outside the formal system.

In another abandoned house, empty cans of energy drinks indicates the presence of migrants. Twenty young men — Pakistani and Afghans from the same Pashtun ethnic group — live in this house guarded by a chained dog. It’s a sign that the dog’s owner is a long term inhabitant and might be working as a smuggler for the others, an aid worker explains. Many have scabies after sleeping on bedding infested by the parasite and then returning to the same places after attempting ‘the game’. One also has an infection caused by a bad burn from cooking oil.

In camps such as the newly-rebuilt Lipa or in Sarajevo, they would have access to food, beds and a range of medical services, including a doctor, medicines, mental health facilities and an isolation room for Covid cases.

As migration experts point out, the international community has become effectively complicit in the ‘game’, which also involves human traffickers. Migrants trying to get to the EU treat the formal camps like Lipa as winter ‘pit-stops’, with the average length of stay just 40 days before moving on.

Professor Claudio Minca of the University of Bologna says this is the result of political ambiguities that have left a ‘gray area’ in the governance of these mobile and ephemeral ‘geographies’ based on information about the Balkan route shared through social media. This includes notes on mountains, rivers and fields, as well as smuggling networks, informal and institutional camps, and NGOs offering food and medical care to migrants.

A young Tajik asylum seeker with his 8 month old daughter in a squat near Velika Kladusa, Bosnia. February 2022. Credit: Chiara Luxardo

“It also reflects, to some extent, a sense of pride on the part of the refugees themselves, related to their determination to succeed not only in just crossing, but also in surviving when they are pushed back in preparation for the next attempt,” Minca and Jessica Collins say in their research paper ‘The Making of Migration’.

This grey area is also a source of tension with local Bosnian communities which sometimes perceive migrants as competing for resources, including health care.

Some migrants’ settlements are known and get support from local and international organisations, with food, portable showers and health checks. Only the UN, Red Cross and DRC are allowed by Bosnia to deliver food however. And migrants are banned from using public transport and taxis under a measure justified by ‘Covid restrictions’.

Healthcare: local versus global

Since migrants are extremely mobile, many pass under the radar. Cases of COVID, other airborne respiratory diseases, tuberculosis, scabies, related infections and antibiotic resistance remain difficult to analyse and detect.

The director of Bihać local hospital, Ademir Jusufagic, says that when the wave of migrants arrived in 2015 it was heartbreaking to see how many children were in need of medical assistance. But fast forward several years and a pandemic, the limitations of the local system stand out, despite some investments by the UN and international agencies to provide the hospital with an X-ray machine and ambulances.

The main challenge, he says, is the lack of finances, especially after an earthquake that heavily damaged the hospital. Low wages make it hard to find and retain doctors and nurses. Most of the young staff go abroad.

“Prevention is down to better investments at a state level. You need to provide higher salaries, especially in places like this,” he says.

From a health security perspective, Jusufagic cites cases among migrants of tuberculosis, which was not present locally, and a high percentage of scabies that can get infected. It is difficult to assess the impact of antibiotic resistance in a mobile population hoping to reach better economic and social conditions. Cases of syphilis and HIV are also reported.

“The first challenge was that there was no control of makeshift camps and no place to surely find people, as migrants were constantly on the move,” he said. “The moving is the biggest issue, as many things go uncontrolled, so we didn’t know what would happen in terms of basic epidemiological prevention in an environment that lacked basic hygiene. So the priority was to provide people the means to clean themselves.”

Meeting in a café along the route to the Croatian border, a well known activist explains how the gulf between local and global perspectives illustrates the source of much of the trouble, as well as the solution for managing healthcare.

“International agencies came having no knowledge of what Bosnia is today and its recent history,” says Ines Tanovic, manager of Kompas 071, an organization that supports migrants on their way to the ‘game’. “The humanitarian industry is a machine and it damages us on the ground with a kind of white-saviour syndrome. Here the focus became only on the migrants but not on the local population.”

As she talks, a group of Pakistanis from Peshawar donate the food they have been donated by an international organization and ask to take a shower “before trying the game.” Tanovic gives them the key smiling and continues to chat.

“People were seeing migrants receiving five jackets each, with no coordination. Then you would see these migrants sell the jackets to Bosnian people with an average salary of 400 euros. It was like seeing capitalism turning the poor against the poor.”

The memory of former Yugoslavia, “where everything was provided for”, also plays a role in the competition for health services, with the downsizing of the public sector in favour of the private, just as local poverty increased.

“Even if the international organisations bought ambulances and some machines, much more could have done for the locals,” Tanovic says.

Contradictions

Migrants’ journeys are notoriously long. Just how long can depend on how much money is paid to human smugglers who guide them through war-time minefields, usually in big groups, according to NGOs. It’s rare not to be caught by the police on the first attempt, so migrants return to the shelters they started from. Many are in bad physical condition after long treks.

“But in the end they all manage it, so attempts by the Croatian police to stop them sound like a waste of money that could be spent better,” comments Silvia Maraone, country coordinator of the Italian NGO Ipsia.

In a hill-top ruin occupied mainly by families from Syria and Afghanistan, a young father holds his 18-month-old daughter. An ethnic Tajik, he says he fled Afghanistan because he feared the Taliban would kill him. Caught in the “grey” zone of the “game”, he explains that his wife and other children are already in Germany but it would take nearly two years for his and his baby’s papers to be processed. “I can’t wait that long, I need to go to my family,” he says.

Names of asylum seekers have been changed or omitted to protect their identities. Additional reporting by Asim Beslija.

*Reporting for this article was funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Global Health Security Call, a programme supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Excerpt:

People in Yangon queue for oxygen cylinders to treat COVID patients as a third wave of the pandemic sweeps through Myanmar. Credit: Sai T

By Sara Perria
ROME, Jul 20 2021 (IPS)

The third wave of Covid-19 is sweeping through Myanmar, from the high narrow buildings of the commercial capital Yangon to bamboo houses in rural areas.

Ma Ni, not her real name, caught the virus in Yangon, infected by her husband and son. But no members of the family show up in the official numbers because they preferred to buy a home test instead of going to a hospital or a quarantine centre.

“It’s been seven days with COVID now,” 34-year-old Ma Ni says. “My husband needs oxygen, but we cannot get it … I hope God will save us.”

Ma Ni’s family is not alone. According to the military’s Ministry of Health, Myanmar recorded 3,461 new cases of COVID-19 and 82 deaths on July 11 alone.

In total, since the pandemic first struck, Myanmar has reported almost 4,000 deaths. Videos circulating on social networks show a dramatic increase in the number of bodies taken to Yangon’s crematorium.

The numbers, although certainly under-reported, are far lower than they were in Europe, the US or India, but they are growing. Moreover, the impact of COVID-19 has been compounded by the aftermath of the military coup on February 1 that ousted elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and triggered nationwide protests, resulting in more than 900 deaths and thousands of prisoners, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an NGO based in Thailand.

As a result, hundreds of panicking citizens are shying away from testing and quarantine facilities perceived as mismanaged by the unpopular military.

“I’d rather die than go to a military hospital,” Ko Moe, again not a real name, tells IPS. “I don’t trust them, and given my work as a volunteer ambulance driver, they might arrest me for helping the protestors.”

The military is trying to stop private initiatives, even shooting to disperse a crowd queuing to refill oxygen tanks. It is also forbidding producers to distribute oxygen to ineligible citizens, saying people are hoarding it unnecessarily.

Myanmar people think otherwise. Deep inside the country, in the city of Taunggyi, Shan State, a doctor interviewed by IPS says people are organising themselves autonomously to cope with the emergency because the health system has collapsed.

“As for now, things look still normal here but … many donors and well-wishers have set up a committee to install oxygen plants by themselves to help the people in the city and the small villages around Taunggyi,” she tells IPS.

Grievances are expressed all over social networks and emotional appeals for help from the international community or obituaries of loved ones who succumbed to the virus.

But it’s also the flu season, which many, feeling abandoned by the State or unable to afford private facilities, mistake for COVID.

“The situation is pretty chaotic. There have been many outbreaks of COVID but also of seasonal flu, in major cities and rural regions,” another doctor working for a private hospital in Yangon tells IPS on condition of anonymity. “People are frustrated for not getting efficient medical care from the authorities, while general hospitals cannot operate on a full scale since the majority of civil service doctors have joined the disobedience movement and there are only a few doctors and nurses left,” he says.

Indeed, only a small percentage of citizens have been vaccinated against the virus. The ongoing protests that started in February have crammed prisons with political prisoners, turning the repression into an epicentre of the outbreak.

Following a recent trip to Russia, junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing announced the purchase of 5 million doses of the Sputnik vaccine. However, it may be too little, too late to avoid an unprecedented health crisis in a country of over 54 million people only partly controlled by the military.

The international community is also accused of not helping, having been already stigmatised for failing to do anything to support Burmese citizens during the coup, beyond statements of condemnation.

The UN special rapporteur for Myanmar Tom Andrews told the Human Rights Commission on July 13 that the junta lacks the “capabilities and the legitimacy to bring this crisis under control”. And the lack of trust in the military makes this crisis “particularly lethal”, he said.

Activists from the opposition ‘Milk Tea Alliance Burma’ expressed the sentiment of the public in a Tweet: “Last year, the pandemic was contained successfully in Myanmar because of collective efforts of everyone. DASSK (Aung San Suu Kyi) was influencing the public well, holding campaigns to make cloth masks, the public followed the instructions well, they masked up and stayed at home without complaining.”

With the population mistrustful of the military and pro-democracy protests continuing, albeit on a much smaller scale, rules are often overlooked.

A Google app tracing people’s movements shows that the situation is back to the pre-coup situation in terms of traffic and crowds in the streets. Many shops may appear to be closed from the outside but are working at normal capacity behind. Masks are usually left at home.

The military has a history of resistance to international aid despite being unequipped to deal with an emergency, as happened in the disastrous aftermath of cyclone Nargis in 2008. The junta is unlikely to change its isolationist stance now, and international help may well be limited, according to a diplomat in Yangon, interviewed by IPS.

“COVID is not going to change anything for the junta, it’s taking people’s minds off the revolution, so it’s not such a bad thing for the military,” he says, asking not to be named for security reasons.

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A young girl in Aung Mingalar Muslim ghetto in Sittwe, Rakhine state, Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By Sara Perria
YANGON/LONDON, Aug 27 2016 (IPS)

Myanmar’s government has responded to pressure from the international community to tackle religious tensions and persecution of Muslims in Rakhine State by appointing former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan to head a commission to advise on “a sustainable solution” to the crisis.

The northwest region bordering Bangladesh has been under close scrutiny from western governments and some U.N. agencies since clashes erupted in 2012 between the Buddhist Arakan community and the mostly stateless Muslim minority."It’s good that Kofi Annan is involved..., but there is also the risk that it becomes a window-dressing for the NLD to buy time and avoid international criticism." -- Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project

The violence, in which extremist monks are accused by human rights observers of playing a role, resulted in over 200 deaths, mostly Muslims. Since then, more than 100,000 Rohingya Muslims have been confined in IDP camps or ghettos. Access to medical treatment, education and jobs are so heavily compromised that thousands from the community have undertaken the risky journey to nearby southeast Asian countries, at the hands of human traffickers.

A 2015 boat people crisis laid bare the existence of mass graves near the border between Thailand and Malaysia, triggering a worldwide call for action to end the Rohingya persecution.

“The Myanmar government wants to find a sustainable solution to the complicated issues in Rakhine State, that’s why it has formed an advisory commission,” the office of Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto head of government, said in a statement announcing Annan’s appointment on Aug. 24.

The Nobel peace laureate, who scored a landslide election victory in November 2015 and took office nearly five months ago, has until recently attracted criticism from outside Myanmar for her reluctance to address openly the issue. Fellow Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, were notably critical last year.

Even as leader of the opposition to the previous military-backed government, Suu Kyi was accused of not speaking out for the 1.1 million Rohingya minority despite her status of human rights icon following 15 years under house arrest.

Her supporters point to the sensitivity of the issue and the risk of triggering further conflicts to justify what others call a dismissive attitude at best. Suu Kyi did however repeatedly call for a quick and transparent solution to the Muslim minority’s lack of status, which has dragged on since 1982 when the military junta under Ne Win stripped many of their citizenship.

The National League for Democracy leader explicitly avoids using the word Rohingya, a controversial term of some historic dispute which triggers fierce responses from nationalist politicians of the Arakan majority who form the largest bloc in the Rakhine State parliament.

The graves of people killed in the 2012 clashes between the Buddhist Arakan community and the mostly stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

In May, the Myanmar government advised foreign embassies, including the US, not to use the term. However at a later meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Suu Kyi also said that she would avoid using the term Bengali, adopted by the previous government and rejected by the Rohingya, as it identifies them as illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, rather than long-term residents.

A statement by the Kofi Annan Foundation in Geneva also chose not to use the term Rohingya.

“I am pleased to support the national efforts to promote peace, reconciliation and development in Rakhine,” Annan said. “I look forward to listening to the leaders and people of Rakhine and to working with the State and central authorities to ensure a more secure and prosperous future for all.”

The statement says the overall objective of the commission, assisted by the Kofi Annan Foundation, is “to provide recommendations on the complex challenges facing Rakhine.”

The commission is to “initiate a dialogue with political and community leaders in Rakhine with the aim of proposing measures to improve the well-being of all the people of the State.”

These will contemplate “humanitarian and developmental issues, access to basic services, the assurance of basic rights, and the security of the people of Rakhine”.

The final report and recommendation will be submitted next year directly to the Myanmar government.

The commission is to meet for the first time next month. It also includes former U.N. adviser Ghassan Salamé, Dutch diplomat Laetitia van den Assum, and representatives of the Myanmar Red Cross Society and human rights and religious groups.

A top official in Suu Kyi’s party was reported by local media as saying that “Mr Annan is influential in international politics, and we need his support to steer a real peace in this country.”

“We need his advice, whether he’s a foreigner or not,” he added.

However, the choice has already hit raw nerves.

According to Eleven Myanmar, a local newspaper, the move has sparked anger from the Arakan National Party.

Teenagers clear ditches before the rainy season in Aung Mingalar Muslim ghetto in Sittwe, Rakhine state, Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

“We cannot accept these developments only after internal issues have been made an international issue,” said ANP chairman Aye Maung. “If tax revenue could be derived from the natural resources in our state within the framework of rights and privileges of our own people, we want to try to develop our region in cooperation with the global community. I don’t accept that the State can develop only after flattering the international community.”

Reaction on social media to Annan’s statement highlighted a harsh debate over which community in Rakhine should be helped, reflecting in some cases the view of extremist Buddhist movements such as 969, which is driven by Ashin Wirathu, a prominent Mandalay-based monk, and the nationalist Ma Ba Tha – the Organisation for the Protection of Race and Religion.

These groups have in the past years exacerbated tensions, calling for the defence of the country against foreign influence and organising rallies in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city. Wirathu, who has a large following on Facebook, has repeatedly stressed how Islam is penetrating the country, threatening the existence of the Rakhine majority.

Such nationalist messages have resonated across Myanmar, with some 90 per cent of the population estimated to be Buddhist. Muslims, who come from various ethnic backgrounds and are not all Rohingya, are estimated to make up about one third of Rakhine’s 3 million people. The state is one of the poorest in Myanmar.

One of the first challenges for the newly established commission will be how to balance the urgent need to find a solution to the desperate situation in which the Rohingya have been forced and an improvement in living conditions for the general Rakhine population.

This balancing of human rights and development issues have been at the heart of a debate raging within the United Nations which has yet to be resolved.

According to a non-profit CDA Collaborative Learning Projects report on conflict sensitivity by Gabrielle Aron, a concentration of humanitarian help since the 1990s within the Muslim areas of Rakhine State has led to the perception of an imbalance in aid disadvantaging ethnic Rakhines. As a result, international intervention has evolved into a trigger for ethnic tensions.

For Suu Kyi’s government, which is in effect sharing power with the military, the thorniest issue will be how to grant some form of citizenship to the Rohingya community that will allow them greater integration with Myanmar as a whole without antagonizing Buddhist nationalists. Meanwhile military leaders casting themselves as protectors of Myanmar’s Buddhist identity are sticking with the term Bengali and have taken a tough line on citizenship.

While the establishment of the commission is seen by many as a positive step, Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project and a respected expert on the conflict in Rakhine, says it leaves many questions open, starting with its unclear mandate.

“Other reports have already come out with ‘recommendations’. But what is needed now is action, and the implementation of what has already been recommended so far in terms of freedom of movement and access to healthcare, for example,” she tells IPS. Lewa is also sceptical about the timeframe, arguing that one year is far too long to come out with suggestions on how to solve the situation.

“I am a bit worried that the commission will not be meaningful. It’s good that Kofi Annan is involved to raise the profile of the mandate, but there is also the risk that it becomes a window-dressing for the NLD to buy time and avoid international criticism,” Lewa says.

Meanwhile the situation in Rakhine and in the camps has not changed much since the NLD has taken over from the military-backed government. Conditions inside the camps are miserable, with temporary bamboo houses now falling apart and too old to offer acceptable living conditions.

Most importantly, the key issue of freedom of movement to allow access to healthcare has not been tackled. “The central government has to take action to end this situation. They need to find a way and force the Rakhine to accept the Rohingya,” she says.

The Arakan Project director, however, also highlights a number of small positive steps undertaken by Suu Kyi, such as the rejection of the term ‘Bengali’.

Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, points to the lack of Rohingya representation within the newly-established commission as its main limitation: “We welcome the commission, but it is quite disappointing that the Rohingya are not included in it,” he tells IPS.

“We want to know how they will consult with the Rohingya community… We are also worried about how the government will act following the recommendations [next year]. People cannot wait for food,” he says.

People fetch water from the new well in the village of Htita, Myanmar. It is 600 feet deep and was built thanks to private donations. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By Sara Perria
HTITA, Myanmar, May 25 2016 (IPS)

The central plains of Myanmar, bordered by mountains on the west and east, include the only semi-arid region in South East Asia – the Dry Zone, home to some 10 million people. This 13 percent of Myanmar’s territory sums up the challenges that the country faces with respect to water security: an uneven geographical and seasonal distribution of this natural resource, the increasing unpredictability of rain patterns due to climate change, and a lack of water management strategies to cope with extreme weather conditions.

Using water resources more wisely is critical, according to NGOs and institutional actors like the Global Water Partnership, which organized a high-level roundtable on water security issues in Yangon on May 24. UN data shows that only about five percent of the country’s potential water resources are being utilised, mostly by the agricultural sector. At the same time, growing urbanisation and the integration of Myanmar into the global economy after five decades of military dictatorship are enhancing demand.

The new government of the de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi now faces the major challenge of delivering solutions to support the country’s rapid economic growth.

A hydroponic greenhouse allows farmers in Myanmar’s Dry Zone to grow vegetable saving up to 90 percent of water. The project is promoted by NGO Terres Des Hommes using technology developed by the University of Bologna and involves over 40 villages. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

A water carrier in Myanmar’s Dry Zone. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

The arid village of Htita, in Bago region, Myanmar. The artificial ponds traditionally used to collect water are empty at the end of the dry season. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Members of Myanmar’s Htee Tan village community. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

A temporary water tank in Myanmar’s Dry Zone. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Speakers at the high level roundtable on Water Security and the Sustainable Development Goals held at Inya Lake Hotel in Yangon, Myanmar on May 24, 2016. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By Sara Perria
HTITA, May 22 2016 (IPS)

It has been two weeks now since the village of Htita, with its few bamboo houses hemmed in by parched, cracked earth and dried-out ponds, has enjoyed the novelty of its first ever water well.

Young housewife Lei Lei Win walks to the noise of breaking soil to fill two yellow containers previously used for cooking oil. With the weight of the 20-litre ‘buckets’ balanced on a pole on her shoulder, it now takes her only one minute to provide her family with the water that she will need to get washed, cook, and also drink. She usually makes two trips a day.

“I save a lot of time,” says Lei Lei, dressed in a traditional longyi skirt. “Before I had to walk much more to fetch water.”

The nearly 200-metre-deep well is not the result of government planning, but the combined 3,000-dollar donation by a Yangon businessman who hails from the village and a travel agency named Khiri, run by a Dutchman, which donates part of its income to build wells in the driest parts of the country.

Situated in the internal region of Bago, Htita is only a two-hour drive from Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon. Even closer is the village of Kawa. But even if residents are enjoying better living conditions, only a few here can afford to pay some 30 dollars a month – a considerable amount of money in Myanmar – to pump water from a nearby underground water source directly to the house tank.

The arid village of Htita, in Bago region, Myanmar. The artificial ponds traditionally used to collect water are empty at the end of the dry season. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

According to a 2014 census, a third of households in the country of 51.5 million people uses water from “unimproved” water sources. A quarter of the population has no flush toilet. Only an average 32.4 percent of households use electricity for lighting.

The same census found that life expectancy in Myanmar is among the lowest in the ASEAN region. Much of this is due to lack of water and food security, with water scarcity and excess of rainfall playing an equal role.

The central plains of Myanmar, bordered by mountains on the west and east, include the only semi-arid region in South East Asia – the Dry Zone, home to some 10 million people. This 13 percent of Myanmar’s territory sums up the challenges that the country faces with respect to water security: an uneven geographical and seasonal distribution of this natural resource, the increasing unpredictability of rain patterns due to climate change, and a lack of water management strategies to cope with extreme weather conditions.

“Water is abundant and plentiful in Myanmar, but there is little infrastructure and electricity, so the economics of accessing water are problematic. This is why the shortages continue year after year,” says Andrew Kirkwood, fund manager of the Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT), a multi-donor fund that focuses on the rural poor in Myanmar.

About 90 percent of rain in Myanmar falls during the rainy season, from June to October. But geographical differences are enormous: rainfall ranges from 750 mm per year in the most arid region of the country to 1,500 mm in the eastern and western mountains and 4,000 to 5,000 mm in the coastal regions.

People fetch water from the new well in the village of Htita, Myanmar. It is 600 feet deep and was built thanks to private donations. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Shortages in the dry zone have been more acute this year because the scant rains of the year before resulted in limited water-storage, according to LIFT. On top of this, El Nino’s higher temperatures during the following 2016 hot season triggered higher evaporation rates.

However, in other areas of the country, failure in ensuring water security has historically been caused by the opposite: extreme rain and disastrous floods.

With the deadly 2008 cyclone Nargis still engraved in the country’s memory, during the rainy season of 2015 the country had to face another emergency. Vast areas, from states in the North-West to the Delta region, were hit by severe and prolonged rains. With no proper water control measures in place, the outcome of an otherwise-manageable natural phenomenon was disastrous: dozens of deaths and almost two million acres of rice fields either destroyed or damaged, according to UN’s humanitarian disaster agency OCHA.

In both cases – drought and floods – failures in managing water security bring precarious hygiene conditions and illnesses, while the effects on agriculture reflect in high malnutrition rates. In the Dry Zone, 18 percent of the population suffers from malnutrition, according to a 2013 LIFT survey, while a staggering quarter of children under the age of five are underweight.

What to do

The correct administration of water resources is the root of the problem in Myanmar, according to NGOs and institutional actors. UN data shows that only about five percent of the country’s potential water resources are being utilised, mostly by the agricultural sector. At the same time, growing urbanisation and the integration of Myanmar into the global economy after five decades of military dictatorship are enhancing demand.

The new government of the de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi is therefore faced with the major challenge of delivering solutions to support the ongoing economic growth.

“Sixty percent of irrigation in South East Asia comes from groundwater,” says LIFT’s fund manager Kirkwood. “But it’s only six percent in Myanmar. Our knowledge of how much groundwater there is and where this groundwater is, is not good at all.”

A hydroponic greenhouse allows farmers in Myanmar’s Dry Zone to grow vegetable saving up to 90 percent of water. The project is promoted by NGO Terres Des Hommes using technology developed by the University of Bologna and involves over 40 villages. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Even against the odds of scant resources, farmers in the Dry Zone produce most of Myanmar’s sesame and pulses, making it one of the largest exporters in the world. The economic impact of better exploitation of resources is evident. However, says Kirkwood, investments have been so far misplaced – forcing farmers, for example, into rice cultivation – and policies inefficient, such as not collecting sufficient fees for water.

Terre des Hommes, an NGO, has successfully introduced into the Dry Zone a hydroponic farming system developed by the University of Bologna. The system requires 80-90 percent less water than soil-based farming, while recycling fluids enriched with fertilizers. It allows landless farmers in particular access to fresher and cheaper food.

“The project has involved 45 villages in townships across Mandalay and Magway,” says project manager Enrico Marulli. The latter region has the highest under-five mortality rate in the entire country, more than twice the rate of its biggest city, Yangon, reflecting the urgent need for life-improvement solutions.

But the long-term sustainability of these project finds its limits in the overall restructuring that the country has to endure. With a new greenhouse costing between 70 and 80 dollars, without external donors’ contribution only access to credit can support vital technological improvements.

However, farmers’ financial inclusion is virtually inexistent. In contrast to other developing countries, microfinance in Myanmar goes mainly to the agricultural sector, says LIFT, but only bigger financial institutions have the capacity to sustain longer-term, higher investments.

Al of these issues will come to the fore on May 24, when the Global Water Partnership High Level Roundtable on Water Security and the SDGs will be held in Yangon. The meeting aims to accelerate gains made by ongoing projects related to water and sanitation, under the guidance of the government of Myanmar and the World Bank.

Meanwhile, in the village of Htita, villagers continue to enjoy the revolution of the new well and fill their yellow containers.