This is a disappointing article from the usually sharp-eyed Kazmin. She didn't follow up on the absurd statement by an international civil servant of the United Nations: “This is an attempt to distinguish the humanitarian agenda from the human rights and political agenda because otherwise, you mix them up and don’t make progress on anything,” said one UN official involved."

One cannot separate humanitarian relief and human rights. No more than you can separate human development and human rights. There are inseparable.

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UN says Burma’s junta is fuelling poverty
By Amy Kazmin in Bangkok
Published: July 11 2007 18:05 | Last updated: July 11 2007 18:05

Burma’s 52m people are facing deepening poverty as a result of its military government’s “ill-informed and outdated socio-economic policies” and “uncompromising attitude” to ethnic minorities, says a confidential United Nations report.
In a bleak assessment obtained by the Financial Times, Charles Petrie, the UN’s top official in Rangoon, said “increasingly arbitrary and widespread land confiscation” and the junta’s agricultural policies were fuelling rural hunger and driving people from their communities in search of work.
International aid agencies trying to help vulnerable groups are under increased pressure from the authorities, which see foreign aid workers as “an extension of the west’s sanctions policy”, the report said.
Conditions are particularly grim for ethnic minorities in conflict areas of eastern Burma, where the army’s decades-old battle with ethnic separatist rebels has displaced more than 500,000 people. Also suffering, Mr Petrie wrote, were 250,000 Muslim former refugees, who have returned home to Burma’s northern Rakhine state, and former poppy farmers hit by opium eradication.
International aid groups did scale up activities in Burma after 2000. But they have faced difficulties since a 2004 political purge within the regime brought the ascendancy of more hardline figures unwilling to “accept objective realities” about the plight of Burma’s people.
Aid agencies, led by the UN, have recently resolved to step up efforts to engage the junta and explain the nature of humanitarian work. “This is an attempt to distinguish the humanitarian agenda from the human rights and political agenda because otherwise, you mix them up and don’t make progress on anything,” said one UN official involved.
The move comes after the International Committee of the Red Cross, frustrated by the junta’s restrictions on its access to prisons and conflict areas, broke its code of silence to accuse the regime publicly of severe violations of humanitarian law.
At the same time, Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy on Burma, is visiting its powerful neighbours, China and India, for discussions on promoting “positive changes”, including the release of political prisoners, and democratic reforms.
Flush with cash from the sale of natural gas to energy-hungry neighbours, Burma’s junta appears more deeply entrenched than ever. But the UN assessment suggests its people are facing mounting hardships. More than 30 per cent live below the poverty line and 30 per cent of under-fives are malnourished. In ethnic minority areas poverty rates can rise to 70 per cent, the report said. It also said health facilities were unable to cope with patients with rising rates of HIV/Aids and drug-resistant tuberculosis.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a8ee93e6-2fc2-11dc-a68f-0000779fd2ac.html