Refugees and immigrants in Thailand - Thailand's international treaty obligations and relevant Thai legislation

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Description: "JAKARTA – The incoming Thai government must heed calls from civil society to reform policies on refugees to be more compassionate and in line with international human rights standards, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) said today. “We support calls made by the Karen Peace Support Network and other locally-led civil society groups regarding Thailand’s policies on refugees and asylum seekers,” said APHR Chair and member of Indonesia’s House of Representatives Mercy Barends. “The incoming government must respond to the needs of refugees, uphold their human rights, and guarantee their safety.” According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are over 90,000 Myanmar refugees living in nine recognized refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border. Refugees, some of whom have been stuck in limbo for years, are strictly confined behind fences and barred from seeking employment in Thailand. According to the Karen Peace Support Network, the current food ration is valued at approximately 300 THB or 10 USD per month. Meanwhile, human rights groups have repeatedly criticized Thai border authorities for sending those seeking refuge back across the border to Myanmar, where they are at risk of indiscriminate airstrikes, arbitrary arrest, torture, and worse. In the most recent high-profile case in April this year, Thai immigration authorities detained three members of a Myanmar opposition group that had crossed into Thailand to seek medical treatment and then handed them over to the Myanmar junta-allied Border Guard Forces (BGF). Witnesses say that BGF troops shot at the men after the handover. According to media reports, at least one of the men was killed, while the fates of the other two remain unclear. “The incoming Thai government must recognize that the junta’s treatment of refugees cannot continue. The new government must grant Myanmar asylum-seekers safe passage through the border and guarantee their access to humanitarian assistance. Refugees living in the camps in Thailand must be given access to educational and economic opportunities that will allow them to thrive outside the camps in various capacities,” said Barends. “Adding to the suffering of those who have already been forced from their homes by a murderous junta is unconscionable; any administration that claims to represent change must start by immediately remedying this untenable situation,” said Barends..."
Source/publisher: ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights
2023-06-28
Date of entry/update: 2023-06-28
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Description: "Who could have supported ACTED Covid-19 home-visit interventions in refugee camps better than the residents themselves? To prevent the virus from entering Ban Mai Nai Soi and Ban Mae Surin refugee camps on the Thai-Myanmar border, 36 Myanmar refugees joined ACTED to conduct information sessions on Covid-19 and Hygiene Kits distribution to all camp residents. We asked four of them to share their experience with us. From ACTED ex-trainees to ACTED camp-based workers Aged 19 to 51 years old, they speak Burmese, Karen and/or Karenni (local languages from Myanmar). When they heard of the opportunity to join ACTED for a month, all of them were familiar with the organization. In 2015, both Akamin and Be Bya Na, only 15 years old at the time, graduated from ACTED Motorcycle and Electric Wiring and Sewing trainings in Ban Mai Nai Soi camp, attending each day after school. Be Bya Na remembers enrolling to the latter training as she wanted to get additional skills after school to increase her chances to become a successful businesswoman one day. To learn about office work, Kee Ler Htoo, a 50-year old mother of nine children, graduated from ACTED’s advanced computing course in 2015 and has been working ever since in the Camp Livelihoods Committee of her camp, as a Livelihood coordinator. Interested in IT for years, Yar Ree Htoo, a 51-year-old gardening enthusiast, enrolled in the computer course in 2019. “I learned how to use Microsoft, Excel, Photoshop, among many other things and it was so helpful.” This year, the four of them became camp-based workers, with the ultimate goal to support and inform their community about Covid-19. When asked about why it was important for everyone to be aware and understand how to be protected from it, Be Bya Na responded “to help and save other lives.” Involving camp-residents through Hygiene Kits distribution and home visit sensitization To conduct their activities, camp-based workers worked in pairs. Akamin and Be Bya Na, long-time friends, decided to conduct their home visits together, first participating in hygiene practice trainings and receiving Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), namely a cloth mask, gloves and hand sanitizers. Each day, they visited approximately five households, always ensuring to wear a mask and to respect a 2-meter social distancing while interacting with their fellow camp-residents..."
Source/publisher: ACTED via "Reliefweb" (New York)
2020-06-12
Date of entry/update: 2020-06-12
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Description: INFOGRAPHIC
Source/publisher: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (Geneva) via Reliefweb (New York)
2019-12-04
Date of entry/update: 2019-12-05
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 365.45 KB
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Description: "ကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ်ကီၢ်ကယီၤကီၢ်ဆၢ၊ မဲၢ်လးကညီဘၣ်ကီဘၣ်ခဲဒဲက၀ီၤပူၤ ၦၤဘၣ်ကီဘၣ်ခဲဖိဂ့ၢ်၀ီ ဘီမုၢ်စၢဖှိၣ်၀ဲၤဒၢး (UNHCR) အိးထီၣ်ဃာ်၀ဲ (Voluntary Repatriation Center-VRC ) လၢအမ့ၢ်တၢ်က့ၤကဒါက့ၤလၢနီၢ်ကစၢ်တၢ်ဘၣ်သး အံၤအ၀ဲၤဒၢးအပူၤ ၦၤလၢအဟဲတီၣ်ထီၣ်ဃာ်မံၤ ၁၈ ဂၤအံၤ ဖဲလါနိၣ်၀့ဘၢၣ် ၁၅သီအနံၤ ကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ်ဒီးကီၢ်ပယီၤၦၤ ဘၣ်မူဘၣ်ဒါတဖၣ် ဟဲတၢ်ထံၣ်လိာ်သံဒိးသံကွၢ်အ၀ဲသ့ၣ်၀ံၤ၀ဲလံအဂ့ၢ်န့ၣ် ဒဲက၀ီၤၦၤ ဘၣ်မူဘၣ်ဒါတဖၣ်တဲ၀ဲန့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
Source/publisher: KIC (Karen Information Center)
2018-11-23
Date of entry/update: 2018-12-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Sgaw Karen, English
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