Myanmar is a country with many complex political and humanitarian issues. While it is rich in natural resources, it remains one of the poorest and most undemocratic countries in Asia. It has a history of ethnic and political division and many of the antagonists are still to find lasting reconciliation. Myanmar has been controlled by military juntas and former army generals since a coup in 1962. The focus of the regime is security and the preservation of its position as the ruling elite, at the expense of democracy and the humanitarian needs of the general population. The international response to the humanitarian plight of the Myanmar people has been mixed and the provision of international aid to Myanmar has become a highly contentious issue. This thesis seeks to critically examine international aid to Myanmar so as to determine whether under present conditions humanitarian assistance should, and can, be effectively provided to the country. In doing so recent theories relating to humanitarian assistance and intervention are reviewed and the historical and political circumstances that have influenced the humanitarian situation in Myanmar are explored. A description of the current humanitarian situation and levels of international assistance is provided, and donor, practitioner and activist perspectives on international assistance are determined. The results of this study show that Myanmar has serious humanitarian needs. Despite being a difficult environment in which to operate, with complex political problems, it is still possible to conduct effective programmes in the country. Existing programmes do not reach all those in need, nor do current programmes address many of the core problems. International assistance does help fill the gap left largely unattended by the junta. Any lasting political solution requires the participation of all stakeholders in the country, especially the military. As the junta is unlikely to relinquish political control, regardless of pressure levelled against the senior generals, the need for ongoing international aid remains obvious. When all the considerations about providing aid to Myanmar are taken into account, it is apparent from this research that the conditions are serious enough to justify that there is a humanitarian imperative to help, and that there are sound opportunities to do so.

Introduction: This study was conducted to gain an ethnographic understanding of the Karen persons from Myanmar and their perceptions of tuberculosis (TB) as well as to provide the DeKalb County Board of Health (DCBoH) TB program with practical recommendations for serving this population. Methods: In-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted with 37 Karen-Burmese persons living in the U.S. Local bilingual, bicultural researchers conducted the interviews with respondents recruited from the DCBoH TB clinic and surrounding communities in DeKalb County, Georgia. Both qualitative and quantitative strategies were used to analyze the data. Results: We found that the levels of knowledge pertaining to TB varied greatly. There were few perceptions that were statistically significant among gender and recruitment sources. Also, misconceptions were common in regards to TB transmission and low perceptions of risk. The respondents did request TB education in various formats such as videos and television. Some reported difficulties at the DCBoH included lack of interpreters, limited transportation, and clinic hours. Conclusions: Some of the perceptions of the Karen-Burmese towards TB can be addressed through education. To begin this process it is recommended that the DCBoH TB program provide language-appropriate services that enable both clients and staff members to effectively focus on all concerns regarding TB. Extended clinic hours and transportation would also be helpful for Karen clients. It is important that the staff receives continuous training in cultural competency and an overview of potential misconceptions that this population may embrace.

Introduction: This study was conducted to gain an ethnographic understanding of the Karen persons from Myanmar and their perceptions of tuberculosis (TB) as well as to provide the DeKalb County Board of Health (DCBoH) TB program with practical recommendations for serving this population. Methods: In-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted with 37 Karen-Burmese persons living in the U.S. Local bilingual, bicultural researchers conducted the interviews with respondents recruited from the DCBoH TB clinic and surrounding communities in DeKalb County, Georgia. Both qualitative and quantitative strategies were used to analyze the data. Results: We found that the levels of knowledge pertaining to TB varied greatly. There were few perceptions that were statistically significant among gender and recruitment sources. Also, misconceptions were common in regards to TB transmission and low perceptions of risk. The respondents did request TB education in various formats such as videos and television. Some reported difficulties at the DCBoH included lack of interpreters, limited transportation, and clinic hours. Conclusions: Some of the perceptions of the Karen-Burmese towards TB can be addressed through education. To begin this process it is recommended that the DCBoH TB program provide language-appropriate services that enable both clients and staff members to effectively focus on all concerns regarding TB. Extended clinic hours and transportation would also be helpful for Karen clients. It is important that the staff receives continuous training in cultural competency and an overview of potential misconceptions that this population may embrace.

This thesis studies the factors driving the movement of Myanmar’s reference exchange rate against the dollar during its managed-float currency regime from 2012 to 2018. Time series and event study analysis are used to assess how reforms have affected the value of the Myanmar Kyat. The exchange rate policies and movements of nearby Asian currencies over the same sample period are also considered to determine whether the depreciation of the Myanmar Kyat parallels that of the others (Chinese Renminbi, Vietnamese Dong, Thai Baht, Cambodian Riel, and Singaporean dollar). The results show that the Myanmar Kyat is significantly influenced by US inflation and the Myanmar’s 2015 general elections, and that the Kyat is indirectly influenced by the Renminbi and the USD, through the currencies’ effects on the Dong. Comparing the M2/GDP and stock market capitalization to GDP ratios showed that Myanmar’s market lags behind its Asian counterparts. However, the government treasury bond market launched in September 2016 and the stock exchange launched in December 2015 offer hope for secondary trading and a deepening of the financial sector in the future.

This research discusses urban vulnerability to environmental change in Dawei, Myanmar through the analysis of the exposure and sensitivity of urban systems. The scope of this research attempts to encompass the complexity of multi-scalar relationships between the exposure and sensitivity of urban systems and wider supporting ecological systems to climatic and non-climatic shocks and stresses. Moreover, this research aims to bridge systems and people-centred approaches by considering the existing sensitivity of vulnerable populations living in Dawei through the use of two case studies. Specifically, an urban livelihoods approach was used to consider the entitlements, priorities, and capacities of households to cope with shocks and stress given existing challenges. The analysis of findings have been presented according to nested scales, beginning with the macro-level in the consideration of the exposure of urban socio-ecological systems; the meso-level through the analysis of the differential exposure and sensitivity of two communities living in Dawei in light of access to urban infrastructure and services; and lastly, the micro-level through the analysis of household sensitivity through the application of a livelihoods approach.

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Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / This dissertation explores the intersection of gender, violence, and dispossession among Burmese migrants living in precarious circumstances in Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar. In this space, particularly in the town of Mae Sot and surrounding areas, migrants are targets of multiple overlapping technologies of governance, including the Thai state, multinational garment export processing facilities, plantation-style agricultural firms, international humanitarian NGOs, and transnational social and political networks. Through a multi-modal qualitative approach relying on collaborative action research and key informant interviews, I consider how this complex web of discursive and relational power simultaneously renders migrants invisible subjects of global supply chains and yet hyper-visible targets of humanitarian assistance and intervention. Invisible because actors associated with state or market forces performatively enforce upon migrant bodies the violent notion that they are deportable, reiterating the boundaries of sovereignty at each encounter. And visible because as migrants struggle to make ends meet working long hours for illegally low wages, NGOs spotlight their social problems and offer solutions that promote individual biowelfare but not wider transformative change. Despite what appear to be opposing forces, both forms of power contribute to the production of gendered border subjects that are healthy workers; ethical and self-reliant yet docile. Migrants interpret and negotiate these overlapping systems, exerting agency as they rely on their own social and political networks to establish mechanisms of order that are shaped by but not necessarily subordinate to the disciplinary regimes of factories and farms, the juridical frameworks of the state, or the biopolitical gaze of NGOs. This dissertation finds that within these mechanisms, gender becomes a key discursive metaphor both to make sense of the widespread violence of displacement and to maintain collective order. Migrants' own gendered performances of discipline are themselves a product of border precarity and forge pathways of limited agency through which migrants seek to navigate the everyday conditions of that precarity. Throughout, this dissertation reflexively examines its own collaborative action research approach as well as humanitarian intervention on the border to identify ways that both are complicit in gendered border subjectivation. Gender in this analysis manifests itself as a set of discursive resources that NGO staff and migrants make use of as they seek to effect change--albeit in ways that tend to leave unchallenged the larger structural conditions of violence and neoliberal sovereignty that undergird and require the formation of a docile and disposable border population. Thus, in one sense, this dissertation is about how migrants survive in a violent context of dispossession, but it is also just as much about the generative qualities of violent life, the spaces in which agency challenges precarity, and the ways in which performatively reproduced gendered hierarchies are at the center of both precarity and resistance. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

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In 1988, the military government in Myanmar abandoned the socialist ideology and isolationism that had shaped the state since independence, embarking on a transition to an open economy and engagement of the international community. ¶ Where socialism had failed, economic development and partnerships with former insurgent groups became the new strategy to advance the military’s security agenda. The primary goal of the security agenda is to promote state consolidation based on a unitary state structure, and according to military values and interests. However, the military’s goals are antagonistic to much of the country’s population, especially its ethnic minority groups. Consequently, the military lacks moral authority, and is preoccupied with maintaining its power and seeking legitimacy. The state is oriented to regime maintenance rather than policy implementation, leaving the regime without autonomy to pursue policy goals outside of its security agenda. ¶ The changing nature of the state, and state-society relations during the period of transition is revealed by trends in social development. Specifically, this thesis explores these issues through a case study of the health system. One impact of the economic transition and the military’s new nation-building strategy has been the abandonment of social equity as an ideological goal of the state. Even under socialism, state capacity to promote health was weak. In the transitional state, weak state capacity is now combined with a political incapacity of the regime to make public health a priority. In the quest for performance legitimacy, the military government is pursuing a narrow conception of development that values economic growth. Putting the state’s scarce resources into social development does not fit into this development strategy. Government expenditure on health has declined steadily since 1988, and health bureaucrats struggle to implement government policy. Standards in the public health system are very low, and most people seek health care in the private and informal health sectors. ¶ Therefore, the military regime’s inability to achieve state consolidation, which leaves it preoccupied with its own legitimacy crisis, is a significant factor in the inability of the Myanmar state to promote social development. The process of economic transition from a socialist economy has exacerbated this through the withdrawal of the state from financing and delivery of social services, resulting in increasing inequity of access to these services.

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(農学) / 甲第19044号 / 農博第2122号 / 新制||農||1032 / 31995 / 京都大学大学院農学研究科地域環境科学専攻 / (主査)教授 縄田 栄治, 教授 舟川 晋也, 教授 白岩 立彦 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当