Karen Community Groups Want Respect, Management Rights and Governance Over Ancestral Territories

The Salween Peace Park Committee (SPPC) and Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) released a media statement to commemorate International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9, 2018, the 11th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The joint media statement said “war-displaced Karen communities and their allied civil society organizations gathered in Ei Tu Hta Displaced Camp, Mutraw District, to celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.

The KESAN statement noted that despite – “generation after generation, indigenous Karen communities sustainably coexisting with the lands, waterways, and forests around them” – war with the Burma Army had caused massive displacement and suffering.

KESAN explained that after “decades of armed conflict, displacement by large-scale hydropower projects, and the destruction of their ancestral forests by illicit extractive and trafficking activities” Karen people have seen enough destruction of their lands and communities.

“Today, our indigenous Karen communities demand that the Burmese government honor the global consensus on the rights of indigenous peoples and a universal framework of minimum standards for their survival, dignity and well-being.”

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