Burma’s Ethnic Jigsaw Puzzle
covering burma and southeast asia
Friday, March 29, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW

Burma’s Ethnic Jigsaw Puzzle


By DAVID SCOTT MATHIESON OCTOBER, 2008 - VOLUME 16 NO.10


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The repeated use of the phrase “aid and human rights industry” to describe initiatives based around the Thai-Burmese border is somewhat distasteful, not to mention disingenuous, even churlish.

As South states numerous times, this is where he cut his teeth as an aid worker and researcher, before going on to become a consultant for the United Nations and other international groups in Burma.

He fails to outline any similar shortcomings of international aid agencies working inside the country—their political compromises and the dilemmas of dealing with the authoritarian power structures of the Burmese military and unaccountable ethnic militias such as the Wa and Kokang, even though in “industrial” terms these UN and private agencies dwarf the border-based cottage industry. In fact, few if any of these groups do human rights protection work inside Burma, something South omits to mention. The section on the politics of development aid is lamentably weak.

Nevertheless, this book should be standard reading for all aid workers coming into the country now, and must be a cornerstone of the urgent and necessary debate the international community needs to have with the people of Burma on the development of their country. South’s respect for Burma’s ethnic people is clear, and he has succeeded, mostly, in doing his subject real justice.

David Scott Mathieson is Burma consultant for Human Rights Watch.



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