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ERI Calls On Oil Companies to Use Their Influence With the Junta to Improve Desperate Conditions Burma's Resource Curse Profile of an Earth Rights Defender US Renews Sanctions Against Burma Burma's Army Continues to Use Rape as Weapon of War Bush Campaign Sells Burma-made Clothing EarthRights International’s Statement in Honor of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s Birthday ...more

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Civil Soceity Demands Burma Gas Project Stop, Citing Human Rights Concerns Gandhi's Birthday, SGM Demands India Suspend Oil and Gas Investments in Burma An Industry Blind to People’s Tears First as Tragedy, Second as Farce: Thailand Again Potentially Complicit in Human Rights Abuses Burma Project Trainings ...more

Press Releases
ERI Presents At Inaugural Yale Law School Symposium on Corporate Social Respnosibility Blind Eye in Burma ERI Contributes Two Chapters To New Book On Burma; Canadian Mining Company Gone But Still Profiting ...more

Burma Project: Other Areas of Work

International Financial Institutions:

The Burma Project works to keep IFIs out of Burma and to prepare communities with a detailed understanding and critique of IFI approaches to development. We also join regional and international efforts to strengthen internal and external accountability mechanisms of the IFI’s including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and private banks. Currently, ERI is involved in ground level monitoring of the Asia Highway extension project in Burma which forms part of the ADB’s East West Economic Corridor Initiative.

Conflict and Natural Resources in Burma:

The Burma Project conducts research and publishes reports on the relationship between Burma’s conflict and natural resource exploitation. Burma's many conflicts seem frustratingly intransigent, and it is the political, social, and military problems that have gained international attention. While much attention is rightfully paid to the violence and repression around these conflicts, much less is paid to ideas about the natural resources that fuel them – commonly terms “conflict resources.”

EarthRights Promotion:

The Burma Project conducts trainings and skill building activities for activists from Burma. These activities are designed to raise awareness and strengthen the capacity of communities to address the varied human rights dimensions of environmental degradation in Burma.

Burma Project Reports

ERI Releases Findings of Chinese Multinational Investment in Burma's Natural Resource Sectors

The Burma Project released a background paper today on the increasing involvement of Chinese multinational corporations (MNCs) in securing Burma’s natural resources. The paper, entitled China in Burma: The Increasing Investment of Chinese Multinational Corporations in Burma’s Hydropower, Oil & Gas, and Mining Sectors, finds more than 26 Chinese MNCs involved in more than 62 projects in Burma over the past decade, and includes a preliminary list of Chinese MNCs operating in Burma. The projects, ranging from small hydropower projects to a planned dual oil and natural gas pipeline from western Burma to Yunnan Province, are indicative of the increasing presence and influence that China has in Burma. While the actions of Chinese MNCs outside China have received much attention in recent years, their activities in Burma have too often been overlooked. In fact, the environmental degradation and abuses that often come from large-scale development projects in Burma is reason to pay attention.

We encourage others, locally, regionally, and internationally, to increase dialogue regarding China’s operations in Burma, and to call upon China’s MNCs to increase transparency regarding operations in Burma, to ensure that abuses connected to their projects do not happen, and to ensure that environmental and social assessments are carried out.

Click here for the China in Burma Background Paper. (Also available in Chinese and Burmese.)

| Learn more about ERI's Burma Project |

Turning Treasure Into Tears - New Report Details Strategic Business Interests & Violations In Burma

This report describes how human rights and environmental abuses continue to be a serious problem in eastern Pegu division, Burma – specifically, in Shwegyin township of Nyaunglebin District. The heavy militarization of the region, the indiscriminate granting of mining and logging concessions, and the construction of the Kyauk Naga Dam have led to forced labor, land confiscation, extortion, forced relocation, and the destruction of the natural environment. The human consequences of these practices, many of which violate customary and conventional international law, have been social unrest, increased financial hardship, and great personal suffering for the victims of human rights abuses.

New ERI Report on Conflict Traditions in Burma

Burma's many conflicts seem frustratingly intransigent, and it is the political, social, and military problems that have gained international attention. While much attention is rightfully paid to the violence and repression around these conflicts, much less is paid to ideas about the natural resources that fuel them – what EarthRights International calls “conflict resources.” Inadequate attention goes, too, to the traditional mechanisms of conflict transformation used at the local level in Burma, which represent a good deal of hope for the future of democracy and peace in the country.