German development aid is needed most urgently in minority regions

On the occasion of his visit to Burma, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has called on Dirk Niebel, Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, to support the long neglected regions of ethnic minorities. "There is a lot of poverty in the rural areas of Burma, but nowhere is the situation worse than in the minority regions," explained Ulrich Delius of the STP's Asia section on Sunday in Göttingen. The areas of the Kachin, Karen, China, Shan, Karenni, Rohingya and other peoples are suffering massively from decades of continuous civil war. Some 450,000 people in these areas, for the most part in remote mountain regions, are still refugees. The Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Dirk Niebel, began a three-day visit to Burma on Sunday.

In the areas where ethnic minorities live, the child mortality rates are three times higher than the national average. Medical care for the Kachin is so catastrophic that only four percent of the women have their children in hospitals. Aid organizations point out that 60 percent of the infant deaths in minority areas could be prevented if there was adequate medical care. Up to 40 percent of Kachin children are undernourished, which weakens their immune systems and leaves them more vulnerable to serious illness.

In education, too, the ethnic minorities are at a severe disadvantage compared to the Burmese majority population. While the national average shows approximately 80 percent of all children in this multiethnic state attending school regularly, less than 50 percent of the children in some minority areas can go to school. War, flight and attacks, as well as high tuition fees, make it difficult for children from minority regions to attend school.

More than one quarter of the population in Burma live the below the poverty level. One of the least developed nations, Burma ranks at number 149 out of 187 countries in the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme.

Ethnic minorities make up approximately 30 percent of the country's 54 million inhabitants. Their regions are known to be particularly rich in natural resources, which are being systematically mined primarily by Chinese companies. These regions are also expected to produce energy for all of Burma and its neighboring countries. There are currently 28 dams under construction in these areas in spite of protests by local populations.