Pinheiro Warns of Burma Humanitarian Crisis

February 24, 2006

The international community should increase coordination in dealings with the military rulers of Burma, where humanitarian conditions are deteriorating, Paolo Serghio Pinheiro, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma, said on Friday.

It was not possible for the international community to achieve a single approach to Burma, “but what we need is real coordination between the different approaches,” Pinheiro said. Such coordination, was not “a magic wand” for improving conditions in the country, but “perhaps we can achieve more results,” he added.

Pinheiro was speaking after visits to neighboring fellow-Asean countries, where he detected a perception that the Burmese situation must change. “The region is tired of the embarrassments that Myanmar [Burma] is provoking,” he added.

Pinheiro, speaking near the end of a six-year term as special rapporteur, said he had seen no improvement in conditions in Burma since November 2003, the last occasion he was permitted to visit Rangoon. On the contrary, he said, “there are signs the situation is deteriorating.”

His comments echoed his damning final report on Burma, released earlier this month, in which Pinheiro expressed dismay about continuing human rights abuses and warned of “deep-rooted and worsening poverty, the continuing violation of economic rights and the lack of economic reform, which is subjecting the population to unnecessary privation, and moving the country towards a humanitarian crisis.”