Opium ban spells disaster for 2 million people in Burma

Drugs

Opium ban spells disaster for 2 million people in Burma

An international network of activist-scholars based in Amsterdam warned today that an estimated 350,000 households, about 2 million people, stand to suffer most from the opium bans in Burma.

The Transnational Institute (TNI) that has been running the Drugs and Democracy programme since 1996 said, on the eve of the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug Trafficking that falls tomorrow, that the bans are being imposed in response to pressure from the international community without giving a voice in the decision-making process to the farmers. The TNI press release reads, "At the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) in 1998, the international community agreed to involve local communities, but this principle seems to have been forgotten in the deadline-driven efforts to cut supply to consumer countries."

In the case of Kokang in Shan State, more than a quarter of the population (a third, according to UN World Food Programme) have left the region since the ban was implemented in 2003, it says. Over half of population there have food security only for six months. In some cases, people are trying to survive by eating tree bark.

Other responses include selling off daughters, households, livestock and land, withdrawal of children from school and abandonment of health services.

"These opium bans may sound promising to anti-narcotics officials, but for opium farmers it spells disaster," says TNI's Martin Jelsma, who had in 2003 co-edited the Drugs and Conflict in Burma / Myanmar debate paper http://www.tni,org/drugs.

It urges a "viable and humane approach" which involves

• Easing the deadlines

• Establishing the basis for alternative livelihoods

• More international assistance for a sustainable community-based development

• Empowerment and strengthening civil society which will enable farmers to participate in decision-making processes about their future

Together with Afghanistan, where the opium ban issued in 2002 will be enforced more rigorously, the banning will be having an immediate and profound impact on the livelihoods of 4.3 million people, it cautions.

Tomorrow, Bao Youxiang, President of the Sino-Burma border based Wa, is due to declare a formal ban on opium production in his area.

He has promised several times in the past to "chop my head off" if a poppy plant is still around after 26 June.

Press Release