Corporate Engagement Project ? Myanmar/Burma report November 2002...PREFACE: The Corporate Engagement Project (CEP) is a collaborative effort, involving multinational corporations that operate in areas of socio-political tensions or conflict. Its purpose is to help corporate managers better understand the impacts of corporate activities on the contexts in which they work. Based on site visits, CEP aims to identify and analyze the challenges for corporations that recur across companies and across contexts. Based on the patterns that emerge, CEP develops management tools and practical options for management practices that respond to local challenges and address stakeholder issues. In this context, a team of three (Mary B. Anderson, President of the Collaborative for Development Action; Doug Fraser, Independent Consultant; and Luc Zandvliet, Project Director of CEP) traveled to Myanmar from October 18 ? 30, 2002 to visit the Yadana pipeline project, operated by TotalFinaElf (TFE). Our purpose, as in all our visits, was to examine the interaction between corporate operations and surrounding communities, as well as the impact of corporate operations on the wider context of conflict. While our focus was on these interactions at many levels, our review inevitably also included a consideration of the corporation?s effects on the human rights situation in the region of the pipeline and beyond in the country at large. The point of departure for any CEP visit is what we observe on site and what we hear that is substantiated both by examples and by consistent repetition. Although familiarity with the history of a project and region is indispensable for understanding current operations and policies, we neither validate nor invalidate past operational policies or their impacts, unless we observe these in current dynamics. Therefore, this visit was focused on analyzing present operations and policies and their positive or negative consequences on people living in the contexts of operations. This focus follows the same approach undertaken in all CEP work with corporations that participate in the Corporate Engagement Project. As a matter of principle, the Corporate Engagement Project works with all corporations who wish to be engaged and who express their interest in understanding and improving their relations with communities where they work. This visit was the first CEP visit to the Yadana Project in what is planned as a series of three. We invite feedback on the observations laid out in this report. We hope, as well, that this report will contribute to broader discussions within the company and between the company and stakeholders, on the options for corporate engagement in the Myanmar/Burma context. Because we were examining the operations of the Yadana project, in this report we consistently refer to TotalFinaElf?s role (TFE) as the operator of the project. However, our observations concern all joint venture partners.