GlobalPost popped up on my Twitter feed the other day, so I took a look. It has a feature entitled “Myanmar Emerges” that collects together quite a wide array of news videos, articles and slideshows grouped under three headings: opium war, oppression economics, and the people versus the power. Some of the topics are fascinating and even quirky – “mock stars”, for instance, on Myanmar’s pop plagiarists.

The main display is a half-hour video, Promise & Peril, compiled by videographer Jonah M Kessel and correspondent Patrick Winn. It covers three standard Myanmar tragedies relating to the major issues on the webpage: poverty and especially child labour, protest notably at Letpadaung, and ethnic conflict leading to drug abuse in Kachin State. At the same time, there are balancing positives, and the footage is uniformly terrific. The coverage of Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit to Letpadaung following the release of her report advocating renewed mining is also very strong. Sandar, a merchant from A Lay Daw village who was present that day, had this to say: “She acted like a know-it-all. She said we are illiterate farmers and that’s why we were protesting… I think she’s not pursuing democracy. She’s madly pursuing power.”

This is an excellent online resource – great for teaching, and useful for anyone interested in learning more about the country. I’ll certainly be checking the site from time to time.

When at the end of last week the Department of Population in Myanmar’s Ministry of Immigration and Population released provisional census results, the main story was the national population count. Set against a figure of 60 million long thought to be broadly accurate, the actual 2014 estimate of 51,419,420 people came as something of a shock. Missing migrants could fill some of the gap. That aside, though, what do the preliminary returns tell us? Three main features stand out.

The first is population totals in Myanmar’s 15 major territorial units – 7 regions, 7 states, and Naypyitaw capital territory. Two are really very small: Kayah State (286,738 people) and Chin State (478,690). Every other unit contains at least one million people. Eight are reasonably large: Yangon Region (7,355,075), Ayeyarwady Region (6,175,123), Mandalay Region (6,145,588), Shan State (5,815,384), Sagaing Region (5,320,299), Bago Region (4,863,455), Magway Region (3,912,711) and Rakhine State (3,188,963). The next biggest unit is Mon State, with just over two million people.

The second is population densities in those 15 territorial units. Here one part of Myanmar is distinct from everywhere else: Yangon Region, with 723 people per square kilometre. Across the rest of the country there are differences, but they are all variations on a theme of low density. The sparsest populations are in Chin State (13), Kachin State (19) and Kayah State (24). But even Mandalay Region, second to Yangon on the list, has a density of just 206 people per square kilometre.

The third is the overwhelmingly rural nature of Myanmar. Nationally, only 29.6 percent of the population lives in urban areas. The sole significant exception to this general pattern is again Yangon Region at 70.1 percent. Elsewhere, the spread runs from 14.1 percent urban in Ayeyarwady Region to 35.9 percent urban in Kachin State.

Most of what’s written about Myanmar these days is pretty serious – whether it be political and economic reform, the peace process, or ongoing ethnic problems. I’m as guilty of this singular focus as anyone, writing on economics ad nauseam. One thing I find is I don’t spend enough time learning about and enjoying some of the country’s more unique features – in this case, food. Myanmar’s food offerings are almost as diverse as its populations, ranging from the seafood-heavy diets of Rakhine State to the curries of central Myanmar to the topic of this post, the wonderful food of Kachin State. This week I tried my hand at cooking (well, in all honesty, I was really a glorified chef’s assistant) two (similar) dishes: Kachin chicken and Kachin beef. They’re made with the same seasoning, though you prepare the meat a bit differently.

Let’s start with the seasoning. Here’s a list of ingredients you’ll need: 4 small onions; 12-14 cloves of garlic; about a half a finger-sized chunk of ginger (we’re very scientific in our measurements); a bag of quince leaves; a bag of basil; a bag of sawtooth cilantro (if you don’t know what this is, click here); about 10-15 small green chilis (the real spicy ones, but adjust according to preference). The first step is to cut up the onions, garlic and ginger very finely and put them in a bowl. Then, take the quince leaves, basil, and sawtooth coriander and cut them up finely as well. Put them on top of the garlic and onions and ginger. Cut and add in the chilis. Mix together. These measurements should make enough seasoning for both the chicken and the beef, so if you’re only going to make one, just halve everything.

For the chicken: boneless, skinless chicken breast (500g approx.); 1 tomato, cut; 1 teaspoon of ground Sichuan pepper; 2 teaspoons of salt; 1 teaspoon of chicken-flavoured powder; 8-12 ounces of water (enough to cover the chicken, but that will depend on the shape of the pan); 2 tablespoons of oil. First take the chicken breast and cut it into bite-sized chunks. Then, cut the tomato. Put the cut chicken in a preheated pan at medium heat (150C). Then add half the bowl of seasoning, as well as the tomato, Sichuan pepper, salt, and chicken-flavoured powder. Add 8 ounces of water and the oil last. Let it all cook until the water is basically gone, which should take 35-40 minutes. Serve with rice.

For the beef: any kind of beef really (400g approx.); 1 bunch of garlic leeks; ground hickory bark and chili powder (this is straight from Kachin State so you might not be able to find it everywhere – the best substitute would be liquid ‘hickory smoke’ which you can find at an American grocery store!); 1 teaspoon of ground Sichuan pepper; 2 teaspoons of salt; 1 teaspoon of chicken-flavored powder; 1 tomato, cut; 8-12 ounces of water (enough to cover the beef); 2 tablespoons of oil. First cut the beef into small chunks. Cut the garlic leeks (finely) and the tomato as well. Put the beef in a preheated pan at medium heat (150C). Then mix in the ground hickory bark and chili powder together with the other half of the bowl of seasoning. Then, add the tomato, garlic leeks, Sichuan pepper, salt, and chicken-flavoured powder. Finally, add 8 ounces of water and the oil as the last step. Let it cook until the water is basically gone, which should take 35-40 minutes. Serve with rice.

So, there’s the recipe (and since I’m in the last 2 weeks of my PhD, let’s just say it’s also a great recipe for procrastination). I would have taken photos but I was so hungry by the time we got done making everything that I just started to eat and completely forgot! Hope you enjoy!

Jared Bissinger is a part-time chef’s assistant in Myanmar. When not working in the kitchen, he spends his free time as a consultant and development economist. He is also completing a PhD at Macquarie University, where his research focuses on economic institutions in Myanmar and their role in private-sector development.

A particular concern in Myanmar, as in other R2P watch-list states, is hate speech. There have been efforts to counteract it, notably the Panzagar (flower speech) campaign launched by prominent blogger Nay Phone Latt in April of this year. Nevertheless, it’s hard to say the problem is anything like solved. In these circumstances, one section of the UN Secretary-General’s recent R2P report is intriguing. This passage comes from paragraph 56, on page 14:

“The best way to defeat incitement is for respected local figures and organizations to contest it in the print media, on radio and television, on the Internet and social media, and in face-to-face communication. In Côte d’Ivoire, where hate speech has contributed to communal violence, the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) has used its broadcasting capacity to promote a peaceful environment and has been tasked by the Security Council to monitor and report on incitement to hatred, violence or intolerance.”

In Myanmar, the “best way” is conspicuously not being taken by most respected local figures and organizations. So what about launching an initiative like UNOCI? In such a vibrant and contested local media, and social media, context, what chance would such a voice have of being heard? Is there any possibility it could generate a peaceful environment? In short, what progress has been made in Côte d’Ivoire, and are there any lessons that might be relevant to Myanmar? It’s this kind of detailed case study that needs to be written.

There’s not enough R2P talk inside Myanmar, and that’s a negative. Globally, though, debate does take place, and that has to be viewed as a positive. Granted, the range of people involved is very limited, rarely stretching beyond a small humanitarian elite. Still, at least R2P is examined and thereby remains a dynamic, rather than static, feature of contemporary international society. At the heart of much analysis stands a series of annual reports compiled by the UN Secretary-General for consideration by the General Assembly and the Security Council. The sixth document, released last month, is called “Fulfilling our collective responsibility: international assistance and the responsibility to protect”.

This report is of relevance to Myanmar, because it focuses on Pillar II action – and Myanmar is best seen as a Pillar II state. The GCR2P definition holds that here the international community has the responsibility to “encourage and assist” individual states in meeting their core R2P obligations of protecting populations from the four mass atrocity crimes (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing). The Secretary-General’s report asks a simple question: How to do that? Five “common principles” are articulated to guide real-world action: 1 Ensure national ownership; 2 Build mutual commitment; 3 Do no harm; 4 Prioritize prevention; 5 Retain flexibility. These principles make a lot of sense.

Also helpful when contemplating the Myanmar case is the report’s examination of the wide range of public and private actors potentially involved in R2P at national, regional and international levels. Additionally, there is food for thought in a fairly detailed attempt to break down the forms of possible assistance under the headings of encouragement, capacity building and protection. Under encouragement, for instance, the first recommendation is this: “Awareness-raising and disseminating information on human rights and humanitarian standards and norms, including the Geneva Conventions, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and core international human rights instruments, can strengthen structural atrocity prevention at the national level.” That strikes me as spot on.

There is, then, much to endorse in the Secretary-General’s latest report. At the same time, it’s a little abstract and, if I can put it this way, bloodless. Several countries are mentioned, and typically given a single sentence – Côte d’Ivoire, Bolivia, Columbia, Kenya, Guyana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Towards the end, several lists of countries are unfurled. But none of this conveys much sense of what might actually work in a Pillar II state like Myanmar. It would be good, then, if the Secretary-General could commission detailed case studies of instances where concerted national, regional and international action succeeded in scaling back Pillar II concerns in an R2P watch-list state. Then there would be something concrete to chew on.

I only just noticed that the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect placed an op-ed in last Friday’s Jakarta Post – “ASEAN has responsibility to protect the Rohingya from genocide” by Casey Karr and Naomi Kikoler. In a couple of respects, that’s good – important to remind ASEAN of its substantive regional duties, and better (as I’ve said before) than simply uploading material to the internet from an office on New York’s Fifth Avenue. In other respects, though, it’s more of the same – the alarmist language used in the header (perhaps not the authors’ choice, since they themselves write of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing), the renewal of a strategy of lecturing Myanmar from outside, the failure to outline concrete steps that might be taken inside. In short, there’s nothing here that’s likely to make GCR2P part of the solution to the Rohingya problem. To succeed in that, committed grassroots engagement is imperative – bringing to people’s attention the various human rights instruments found in international society, triggering debate about their implications for Myanmar, facilitating understanding of parallel experiences around the world, enhancing inter-communal contact. Only by such means will GCR2P have a chance, in the Myanmar case, of delivering on its stated mandate “to transform the principle of the Responsibility to Protect into a practical guide for action in the face of mass atrocities”.

It’s hard to know how healthcare actually works (or fails to work) on the ground inside Myanmar – still harder of course in peripheral communities in the midst of, or close to, zones of conflict. From the BSC programme, Céline Coderey’s paper therefore looked really interesting. Well, maybe not from the title – “Implementation and appropriation of bio (traditional) medicine in contemporary Rakhine”. But certainly from the abstract, which promised a detailed grassroots study. In the event, the presentation was even better than advertised – a terrific analysis drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2005 and 2010 in Thandwe and five surrounding villages (with a total of 18,500 residents). I took fairly extensive notes, and hope that what I report here does not do injustice to the talk.

In Myanmar as a whole, the healthcare “system” is highly centralized and hierarchical, with distinct strands of western medicine and traditional Myanmar medicine – TMM. Government expenditure was below 2 percent of GDP until 2013, when it climbed to 3.9 percent. Most healthcare spending is therefore out of pocket: 99 percent in 2005, and 92 percent in 2010. Even when provision is funded by the state, “donations” are often requested by healthcare providers. Until recently, there was minimal INGO support.

Thandwe is nestled on the Bay of Bengal towards the southern end of Rakhine State. Here, as in the country as a whole, healthcare is better in the core than in the periphery. The downtown is served by one hospital, eight licensed modern medical shops, and a dispensary operated by the Association Médicale Franco Asiatique, a small INGO. Villages have small stores stocking medical products. Throughout the area, though, much is either missing or inadequate. Moreover, local people are deeply mistrustful of the state, public services, and the entire concept of modern medicine. Operations are thus avoided. Beyond dietary rules, preventive care is treated with suspicion. Self-medication is common, though products are not well understood and, especially in the villages, often past their sell-by date.

Alongside modern medicine, and wholly separate from it, stands a TMM sector that merges imperceptibly into folk custom and belief. In Mandalay, there is a University of Traditional Medicine (dominated, at the managerial level, by specialists in western medicine). Across Myanmar, UTM-trained practitioners operate through dispensaries prescribing mainly pre-manufactured pills and potions. In village Thandwe, however, they tend to be viewed as hybrid providers. True TMM practitioners typically remain old men operating from home and concocting potions in front of patients.

In most respects, then, healthcare in Thandwe, and especially its villages, looks like a survivor from an earlier age. Dominated by folk practice, it is only very haphazardly moving into the contemporary era. While there’s much to be said for making use of traditional medicines in modern societies, there are problems with a system with scarcely any knowledge of the best medical science has to offer.

The past few days have seen a debate surface among western commentators about use of the R-word in Myanmar politics – R for Rohingya, that is. The orthodox position was spelt out by UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee on July 26 at the end of her first visit to the country, and reproduced by Derek Tonkin in a lengthy DVB article. This is what Lee said in defending her practice of employing the contested term:

“I am guided by international human rights law. In this regard, the rights of minorities to self-identify on the basis of their national, ethnic, religious and linguistic characteristics is related to the obligations of States to ensure non-discrimination against individuals and groups, which is a central principle of international human rights law. I also note that various human rights treaty bodies and intergovernmental bodies, including the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which I chaired for four years and of which I was a member for ten years, the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly use the term ‘Rohingya’.”

Against this backdrop, Derek himself raises two main issues. First, he senses that the R-word may not reflect the will of the relevant community. “But what if the chosen identity is imposed from above? What if it is artificially contrived for political reasons, however seemingly justifiable? What if the individuals concerned, marginalised, poorly educated, desperate for citizenship, really have no choice in the matter?” Second, he notes that it is hard to find much historical precedent: “there is no textual evidence for ‘Rohingya’ prior to independence in 1948.” I tend to think Derek’s political assessment has some validity, and I’m persuaded by the detailed historical investigation he’s carried out in recent months. But it’s a big leap from there to his main conclusion that western politicians should “reflect” about using the R-word. “Its use is not helpful … [and] does not create a climate of reconciliation.”

That may be true – but it’s not the point. Rather, at a time when the Irrawaddy reports that the Myanmar government is quite successfully putting pressure on foreign states and aid agencies not to speak of the Rohingya, the task is to reassert basic international human rights principles. As Special Rapporteur Lee argued, those hold that respect must be paid to the name currently claimed by a political community, no matter why that is or what is found in the historical record.

In the Irrawaddy, Alma Freeman has a nice interview with Thant Thaw Kaung, who heads both the Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation, and the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation’s mobile library project. Asked to explain why, at 95 percent, Myanmar has one of the most impressive literacy rates in the region, Thant Thaw Kaung gives this reply: “The literacy rate is high as a result of a few big campaigns that the government started in 1975 where volunteers and college students went to rural areas across the country promoting the value of reading and books. The government received an award for this campaign from UNESCO, and it has continued until recently.” I didn’t know about that – it modifies just slightly the generalized perception of socialist Burma as bleak, oppressive, isolated and incapable of constructive policy initiative. It’s the kind of raw material that’s just itching to be turned into a good novel or movie.

Yesterday I read a fascinating New York Times article by David Leonhardt. It has nothing to do with Myanmar, but it does have interesting implications for societies pretty much the world over. A core statistical exercise involved analyzing every county in the US to determine the easiest and toughest places to live, based on six factors including income, education and life expectancy. Then, grafted onto that was an examination of how web searches differ at each end of the spectrum – in the really easy and the really tough places. “The results, based on a decade of search data, offer a portrait of the very different subjects that occupy the thoughts of richer and poorer America,” writes Leonhardt. “They’re a glimpse into the id of our national inequality.”

Some search items are big across all social classes – Oprah Winfrey, the Super Bowl, and so on. In rich America, though, there are many more searches for digital products such as cameras and iPods, for baby items such as jogging strollers and infant massages, and for exotic travel destinations. In poor America, there are many more searches linked to health problems, weight-loss diets, guns, video games, and apocalyptic religion. OK – maybe not especially compelling in itself. But in Myanmar this sort of disaggregated internet profiling would be a gold mine for social researchers. Moreover, as mobile phone use spreads exponentially over the next few months, gathering the data will become a real possibility. I do hope someone is already thinking about how to make that happen.