POLITICAL BACKGROUND:

There are estimated to about 2 million internally displaced persons in Burma, most of them women and children. Some 110,000 Burmese refugees are registered in the nine camps in Thailand along the Burmese-Thai border. Some of these refugees have been there for as long as twenty years, without any hope of a change or a return to their country. The number of unregistered Burmese people in Thailand is estimated to be 1 million.

Burma is the Asian country with the highest number of landmine victims, apart from Afghanistan. The military junta, which has been ruling the country for 48 years, announced democratic multiparty elections in October 2010. However, the democratic parties doubt that there will really be free elections.

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