Sure.
My main project in the last year has been a population survey in Karen state, similar to what we did in Chin state. Currently I'm analyzing data on that.
Fighting in Kachin state broke out a year ago, in June. We were hearing from local groups on the ground reports of rape, reports of villages being burned, and reports of a lot of human rights violations and a lot of displaced civilians. We had been pressuring aid organizations to go in to provide aid, but either they weren't asking the Burmese government enough or the Burmese government was saying no. This isn't yet clear.
So I decided to visit Kachin to do an emergency report. I went to China and met with Kachin Independence Organization people. We crossed into Kachin state to where the KIO territory is. We don't go through where the Burmese government is.
I had two goals for that report. One was to do a quick humanitarian assessment of displaced people. So I went to Laiza, which is the KIO capital, and I saw maybe 10,000 displaced people living in warehouses and in an abandoned marketplace. They were starting to build refugee camps, but they didn't really have the resources to do a complete job.
We did a quick nutrition assessment of children under five. You can measure their middle upper arm, and based on previous research, you can tell if the children are malnourished. I think we found that 11% had some kind of malnourishment. Given the high prevalence of diarrhea and upper respiratory infections in the camps, the WHO would consider that situation severe, and it would warrant monitoring and intervention.
The other thing I did was interview displaced people about human rights violations. I talked about this in the testimony. I talked to the old man who was forced to walk in front of a platoon of Burmese troops and sweep for mines. Other people were forced to porter. They talked about their villages being burned. Everyone said that their food was stolen by the Burmese army.
There are hard copies of this report here somewhere. We released it in December.
On the China side, I saw maybe 500 Kachin refugees, because they'd crossed the border, living in old sawmills and things. Since then, the number of displaced people has grown to about 70,000.
The UN was blocked from delivering aid. Then they were allowed to go in once, in December. They sent two trucks full of blankets and were there for two days and then left. If you read the reports, they're a little bit misleading. It sounds as if they were there for longer. This is one thing we are advocating for.
Last month, the Burmese government said that they gave the UN unimpeded access, but I haven't heard what kind of aid they're delivering. I know that they sent some food, but they also need medicine and things to build shelters and things like this. The rainy season is about to start, and that's when disease is going to spread a lot faster.