A Refugees International team made up of Senior Advisor Dawn Calabia and Advocacy Associate Kavita Shukla is on mission in Thailand with the purpose of looking at the situation of refugees from Laos and Burma.

Earlier this year, the United States announced plans to consider for resettlement as many as 15,000 Hmong refugees from Laos who for about ten years have been living in Wat Tham Krabok (a Buddhist temple) in central Thailand. The RI team plans to assess the status of processing of cases at the Wat, consideration by the U.S. of cases recommended by UNHCR, the status of U.S. interviews of the refugees, and the timeline for admission to the U.S., especially if limitations are set on the numbers of refugees who can leave Thailand per flight.

Since the mid-1980s, hundreds of thousands of ethnic people have been fleeing to Thailand from Burma’s eastern border to escape human rights abuses and armed conflict. In recent months, there have been changes in Thai policy towards those who have come from Burma. Thai authorities have started to monitor and restrict the activities of Burmese human rights defenders and opposition groups, implemented tighter border controls, taken over the refugee status determination process from UNHCR, and announced moves to relocate urban refugees to border camps. The RI team will examine the impact of these changes upon the Burmese in Thailand, and also talk to recent arrivals from Burma to obtain updated information on the humanitarian situation along the eastern Burma border.