“There is a large numbers of people don’t know how to seek justice and even though they sought, many of them felt unsatisfactory to the court decisions on human rights violations” described in a report in the name of “What Has Been Changes?”, released by a local rights group, Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) in Mon State.
“What have been changes?” report describes the details of human rights situation analysis based on the survey results conducted in six townships in Mon State. The report identifies the background of HURFOM, the survey methodologies, findings on the knowledge of community people on human rights, patterns of human rights violations in the communities, and how the victims’ attempts to seek for justice.
HURFOM Coordinator, Nai Arr Non, explained. “we have trained young people for 20 days and let them collect information based on survey questionnaires in 6 townships for a month. After they returned back, we compiled these data and put into data entry for analysis. It took for six months in total to complete this report”.
According to the report, HURFOM’s survey has mainly targeted post-conflict areas in Mon State, which has been suffered from human rights violations since the military rule under State Peace and Development Commission (SPDC). In the report, the trained human rights field workers conducted survey in six townships by interviewing to 563 people including 324 women from 34 villages in Mon State.
It is a serious as knowledge level on knowing human rights is low in Mon State. About 263 people among 563 interviewees in the village communities never heard ‘what is human rights’. 87 people heard a few on the issue. Therefore, the civil society leaders pointed out it is a need of wider human rights awareness and education to the people in the rural communities not only in Mon State, but entire Myanmar (Burma). 
Daw Pansy Tun Thein, the Executive Director of Local Resource Center (LRC), raised the issue and informed the participants, “raise more human rights awareness in the communities by empowering people to know how to demand for their rights”.
The findings also founded that the land confiscation and land grabs are the main issues in Mon State, following with sexual harassment against women and children. HURFOM has also pointed out that that has been raising on sexual harassment and violence against children under ages.
The report also acknowledges that human rights survey project is under the support of Rights For All project funded by European Union and managed by Local Resource Center, Equality Myanmar, Danish Church Aid and Norwegian Church Aid.
About 50 participants from Mon State government offices, the lawyers and legal assistance groups, women and children’s affairs organizations, and the civil society groups attend in the report launch event. The report is in Burmese (Myanmar) and it has 64 pages which includes 14 contents and 5 annexes.
