Karen People: Their Plight and Marginalization

The Karen people encompass an ethnic group living in Thailand and Southeast Asia which speaks the Sino-Tibetan language. The Karen are an ethnically diverse group of people: many of them are Skaw Karen and still others are Pwo Karen and Bwe Karen. This group makes up around 7% of the Burmese people and many of them live on the border between Thailand and Karen. Approximately seven million Karen live in Burma and around 500,000 Karen live in small villages in Thailand, with even smaller pockets of the Karen in south Asian countries like India as well as other Southeast Asian nations. There are also populations of the Karen living as refugees in a number of western nations. In terms of survival, the bulk of the Karen peoples work as subsistence farmers, living within small villages, raising livestock and growing rice and vegetables. They are...
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