| Disputes - international | over half of Burma's population consists of diverse ethnic groups who have substantial numbers of kin in neighboring countries; Bangladesh struggles to accommodate 912,000 Rohingya, Burmese Muslim minority from Rakhine State, living as refugees in Cox's Bazar; Burmese border authorities are constructing a 200 km (124 mi) wire fence designed to deter illegal cross-border transit and tensions from the military build-up along border with Bangladesh in 2010; Bangladesh referred its maritime boundary claims with Burma and India to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea; Burmese forces attempting to dig in to the largely autonomous Shan State to rout local militias tied to the drug trade, prompts local residents to periodically flee into neighboring Yunnan Province in China; fencing along the India-Burma international border at Manipur's Moreh town is in progress to check illegal drug trafficking and movement of militants; over 100,000 mostly Karen refugees and asylum seekers fleeing civil strife, political upheaval, and economic stagnation in Burma were living in remote camps in Thailand near the border as of May 2017 |
| Illicit drugs | world's second largest producer of illicit opium with an estimated poppy cultivation totaling 41,000 hectares in 2017, a decrease of 25% from the last survey in 2015; Shan state is the source of 91% of Burma's poppy cultivation; lack of government will to take on major narcotrafficking groups and lack of serious commitment against money laundering continues to hinder the overall antidrug effort; Burma is one of the world’s largest producers of amphetamine-type stimulants, which are trafficked throughout the region, as far afield as Australia and New Zealand |
| Refugees and internally displaced persons | IDPs: 505,000 (government offensives against armed ethnic minority groups near its borders with China and Thailand, natural disasters, forced land evictions) (2020) stateless persons: 600,000 (2020); note - Rohingya Muslims, living predominantly in Rakhine State, are Burma's main group of stateless people; the Burmese Government does not recognize the Rohingya as a "national race" and stripped them of their citizenship under the 1982 Citizenship Law, categorizing them as "non-nationals" or "foreign residents"; under the Rakhine State Action Plan drafted in October 2014, the Rohingya must demonstrate their family has lived in Burma for at least 60 years to qualify for a lesser naturalized citizenship and the classification of Bengali or be put in detention camps and face deportation; native-born but non-indigenous people, such as Indians, are also stateless; the Burmese Government does not grant citizenship to children born outside of the country to Burmese parents who left the country illegally or fled persecution, such as those born in Thailand; the number of stateless persons has decreased dramatically because hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since 25 August 2017 to escape violence note: estimate does not include stateless IDPs or stateless persons in IDP-like situations because they are included in estimates of IDPs (2017) |
| Trafficking in persons | current situation: human traffickers exploit men, women, and children through forced labor, and women and children in sex trafficking in Burma and abroad; Burmese men are forced to work domestically and abroad in fishing, manufacturing, forestry, agriculture, and construction; fishermen are lured into forced labor in remote waters and offshore by recruitment agencies in Burma and Southeast Asia; Burmese women increasingly are lured to China for marriage under false pretenses and are subjected to sex trafficking, forced concubinage and childbearing, and forced domestic labor; men, women, and children in ethnic minority areas are at increased risk of sex trafficking and forced labor in farming, manufacturing, and construction; men and boys are recruited locally by traffickers for forced labor in oil palm, banana, and rubber plantations, in mining, fishing, and bamboo, teak, rice, and sugarcane harvesting; some military personnel, civilian brokers, border guard officials, and ethnic armed groups continue to recruit child soldiers, particularly in conflict areas tier rating: Tier 3 — Burma does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so; authorities increased the investigation and prosecution of trafficking crimes, including those involving officials, and the investigation of forced labor in the fishing sector; the government identified and referred more victims to care and enacted legislation enhancing protections for child victims; however, a policy or pattern of forced labor existed; the use of children in labor and support roles by the military increased in conflict zones in Rakhine and Shan States; displacement resulting from military conflict made Rohingya and other ethnic groups vulnerable to human trafficking; the constitutionally guaranteed power of the military continued to limit the government’s ability to address forced adult labor and child soldier recruitment; although authorities allocated increased funding to victim protection, most services to trafficking victims were provided by NGOs and foreign donors (2020) |
Source: CIA World Factbook
This page was last updated on September 18, 2021
