Population-based survey of health and human rights: Documenting crimes against humanity in Burma

Burma is one of the most war-prone countries in the world, having experienced over 200 years of conflict. During the past five decades of continuous military rule, Burmans and ethnic minorities have suffered from systematic and widespread human rights violations including murder and extrajudicial killings, forcible transfer of population, forced labor and enslavement, recruitment of child soldiers, torture, and state-sanctioned rape. Physicians for Human Rights is currently employing multi-stage cluster sampling to assess these health and human rights abuses in Burma. In 2010 PHR will conduct 2000-3000 heads-of-household interviews among four distinct Burmese populations (Chin, Arakan, Shan, Karen).

The health and human rights survey includes basic background and demographic variables, access to health care (geographic access to care, financial access to care, non-discriminatory access to care, and access to health information), food insecurity, forced displacement, forced labor, and other crimes against humanity. All human-rights-related questions pertain to the past 12 months only. Health outcomes include overall health status, acute malnutrition (MUAC), depression (PHQ-2), and child diarrhea. The research addresses the following questions: 1) Do the alleged human rights violations in Burma amount to crimes against humanity as defined by the 2005 Rome Treaty? 2) What are the patterns of these rights abuses and are they widespread or systematic? 3) What are the community- and household-level associations between these violations and health status, access to health services, food insecurity, and malnutrition?