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Humanitarian Assistance

Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Canadian NGOs have provided significant support to border-based civil society organizations (CSOs) from Burma since the early 1990s. Several different branches of CIDA have supported CSOs in developing health services, humanitarian assistance programs, human rights projects, and the provision of food aid to refugees.  In 2000, Asia Branch supported the Canadian NGO Inter Pares in implementing a multi-year capacity-building program – the Capacity-Building of Burmese Refugees project (CBBR) – that provided strategic support to a number of CSO initiatives. The CBBR project was positively evaluated by CIDA in early 2004.  The ongoing work aims to consolidate the results of the CBBR project and incorporates recommendations from the evaluation.

Three major components:

1. humanitarian assistance to refugees;

   We support the delivery of humanitarian inputs (food, housing materials, cooking fuel etc) and services to displaced people in the Thailand Burma border areas through the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC).

2. the provision of health services to displaced people and migrant workers;

   With the Burma Relief Centre (BRC), we support the Mae Tao Clinic, operated by Dr. Cynthia Maung on the Thai Burma border, its satellite clinics, the Backpack Health Worker Team program and a variety of other health initiatives to improve and expand the delivery of health services to people from Burma in Thailand, India and inside Burma.

3. support to the activities of CSOs related to community issues and actions on critical issues such as violence against women, environmental degradation, forced displacement, access to information, and human rights.

   Either with the BRC or the Canadian NGO Committee, we assist CSOs working in areas such as human rights documentation and protection, training, information collection and dissemination, or policy-related issues such as drugs and environmental concerns, to implement their own programs and represent the interests of their constituencies. We promote enhanced inter-ethnic (eg. Mon, Karen, Shan, Karenni, Burman, etc) and inter-sectoral (eg. women’s groups, media and environmental groups, etc.) collaboration and action on issues of concern to their communities. For example, we support the coalition of inter-sectoral organizations, Karen Rivers Watch, which works on the Salween dam issues. These community activities are conducted in Bangladesh, China, India, Thailand and Burma.

A significant part of all of these activities are “cross-border”.