Mediating the Suffering of Karen Refugees and the Representation of their Rights

Abstract

This article argues that contestation is involved in the provision of minority rights to Karen refugees in Thai-Burmese border spaces. Players who operate in the political economy of rights include community based organizations, the KNU, international humanitarian organizations, faith-based humanitarian organizations, local human rights groups and Christian missionary networks. In the unfolding conflict in the Karen state, Southeastern Burma (Myanmar), there are different constructions and revitalizations of Karen culture that are associated with powerful actors and entitlements. Karen culture has been strongly associated with Karen nationalism. It has been invented, essentialized, minoritized and packaged to appeal to a Western élite and to Western donors. The unified construction of Karen culture overshadows the differences within the Karen people. It is then presented to Western donor organizations and the media in order to mobilize support for the KNU. This paper utilizes Merry’s argument which deals with social movements and community based organizations translating and vernacularizing international legal frameworks. With that, the paper makes a first attempt to interface local human rights groups, international humanitarian NGO’s, faith-based NGO’s and local evangelists with internally Karen villagers in Southeast Burma and in Northwestern Thailand. This paper argues that Karen villagers who affected by the violence are able to connect to the humanitarian sector as a third or non-state space so as to negotiate their needs. Thus, the transnational human rights discourse and humanitarian sector has been vernacularized by Karen displaced people in Thailand and Burma. Such vernacularization is used to resist abuses in human rights and to create social security and welfare in the context of oppressive statehood. In closing, this paper proposes that research on this important topic has just commenced and hence more research needs to be done.