In Asia – Abandoned on the Thai border

MAE SOT – Recent reforms and decisions promoted by Myanmar President Thein Sein have been greeted with enthusiasm by much of the international community. Yet, many crucial issues remain unresolved, not least among them ongoing conflicts and tenuous ceasefire agreements between the Myanmar government and ethnic paramilitary groups fighting for autonomy in their territories.

Those armed conflicts have sent tens of thousands of people, many of whom are unregistered and considered stateless people in Myanmar and neighboring Thailand, into refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.

Now, as Thein Sein’s nominally civilian government gestures towards national reconciliation and attempts to forge ceasefire agreements with armed groups, the future of these refugees hangs in the balance.

Given the new possibility to work directly with the Myanmar government, many international humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organizations are weighing whether to leave the Thai border and establish projects and presences directly inside Myanmar, one of Asia’s most impoverished and underdeveloped countries.

The Thai government, meanwhile, has created new obstacles to international organizations that have long operated along the border in an apparent strategy to eventually push the refugees back to Myanmar.

With no binding political agreement between ethnic groups and Myanmar’s government in sight, and a renewed conflict raging in northern Kachin state, the premature departure of international aid, medical and other humanitarian organizations from the still volatile border regions will likely worsen the living conditions of tens of thousands of Thailand-based refugees, aggravating what is already a grave humanitarian crisis.

According to the [READ MORE...on Asia Times Online]