In July 2013, the Council of the European Union confirmed the EU’s willingness to negotiate and conclude an investment agreement with Burma/Myanmar. Yet at this stage, FIDH and its member organisation Altsean-Burma, fear that should appropriate measures not be adopted such agreement would only perpetrate or aggravate existing human rights violations, putting European investors in high risk of complicity of these violations.
Investment projects in Burma/Myanmar have already been linked to violent repression of peaceful demonstrations and detentions of protestors and human rights defenders who denounced their impacts on local communities. They have also led to forced evictions and land confiscations. Without reforms and adequate guarantees, Foreign Direct Investments are likely to exacerbate human rights violations in the country.
In this context, the strategy adopted by the EU seems to suffer from significant shortcomings.
This paper highlights the risks for investments to be linked to human rights violations given the situation in Burma/Myanmar. It calls on the EU to clearly define the best interplay between its various policy tools and to integrate human rights in its investment policy.
Read the FIDH position paper
FIDH_ALTSEAN BURMA Recommendations Concerning EU-BurmaMyanmar Investment Relations