In December 2018, I had the pleasure of meeting Khin Zar Naing and Sanda Thant from the Socio-Economic and Gender Resource Institute (SEGRI), at their office in Yangon, and we discussed the progress on the field study work SEGRI are in the middle of conducting for the Women, Violence and Displacement project.
Hlaing Haryar Township
The first field study is being conducted in Hlaing Taryar which is one of the main townships on the edge of Yangon. It is an industrial zone, which is not considered a particularly safe part of the city, due to problems with crime and poverty. There are a lot of undocumented slums in this township, which has become home to many people who have migrated from areas around the Irrawaddy region, which suffers from regular environmental disasters.
The biggest environmental disaster in Myanmar’s recent history was Cyclone Nagis which happened in 2008. Although this is a long time ago, many of those affected have had to move several times since and have ended up living in the slums in Hlaing Taryar after losing all their savings. So, whilst the main focus of the study is following up on those more recently displaced, people affected by Cyclone Nagis also represent some of the participants the study team have met. Others have come more recently due to the regular flooding in the Irrawaddy region. A third category of interviewee are those who had relied on agriculture but had to migrate due to landslides in the Irrawaddy area. Landowners in the Irrawaddy region are rich but those trying to forge livelihoods in this area are extremely vulnerable to environmental disasters and become displaced.
People living in Hlaing Taryar are mainly casual workers and work in nearby garment factories and as street food vendors. Women are mainly housewives with no income but who are also facing lots of demands, whilst a few have income from working as street food vendors. There is a huge monastic school, established since 2000, in the area, with over two thousand students, so some children get free education and the monk leader is very powerful.
The field study is in progress and at the time of our conversation 131 interviews had been carried out. The study team for this field site comprises two male and seven female enumerators. It is only possible to conduct interviews at the weekends due to the workloads of the women, and evenings are not possible as women are with their families. A significant challenge the team has faced is that it is hard to identify those who have been displaced in what is effectively a large slum site. All local authorities have an influence in the areas of the township and want to know what you want to do, so developing trust in relationships is important and takes time. Going with tablet PCs to support data collection also raises suspicion, as people are not familiar with this, and it needs to be explained. People live in huts which are very closer to one another, so it is also hard to have low profile interviews and ensure the safety of those being interviewed. Urbanisation means that the context for the study creates an environment where people from different ethnic backgrounds are all mixed up in terms of where they live. Those living in slums in Yangon have no land rights at all, many of them do not have national verification card, but some still have to pay rent to others living in the slum for hire a room for a place to sleep.
Pwintbyu Township
Flooding from the Mone river has split the village into two parts so the study team have targeted the most affected communities focussing on those displaced. Getting access at the local / community level is very hard and is taking longer than the team had thought. About 100 interviews had been completed at the time of our conversation. The team is planning to do about forty interviews in each village community which typically has a population of about 120 households, so they select roughly one in three households, and 15% of those interviewed are male. In the Magway area the population are mainly Burmese and Buddhist, but it is possible to make some distinction between those living in different geographical sites.The second field study site is in village near Pwintbyu township, Minbu District, which is in Magway region. The study team for this field site comprises two male and up to eight female enumerators. The township is a couple of hours from Magway, alongside the Pyay road. In Pwintbyu there is a motel where the study team can stay. It then takes 40 minutes to drive from Pwintbyu to the village. The majority of those in the village live by the river bank so they are affected by landslips and slides and when their homes are destroyed, they move back further from the river and rebuild nearby. There us no proper resettlement scheme supported by the Government, but those displaced typically stay with their community. This year the school has been badly affected due to the high levels of water flowing from the Irrawaddy river into the Mone Stream.
In some communities, homes have not been destroyed but there is huge damage to agricultural land, so this category of people are also very eager to talk as they have suffered but don’t meet the criteria of being displaced. This suggests the need to also take a wider look at what has happened to different groups in the community who have been affected differently by the environmental disaster, and who continue to interact and be dependent on each other in different ways.
Jon Gregson, December 2018