The Thai government recently lifted a decades-long ban on working rights for long-term refugees from Myanmar who live in Thailand in a string of nine camps just near the border between the two countries. Some have been there since the 1980s.
The move comes as the United States (US) under President Donald Trump has cut off humanitarian aid programs around the world. Until this year, the US was the largest funder of food aid for the displaced people in the Thai camps.
The problems caused by the food aid cuts have also been exacerbated by an influx of new refugees driven out of Myanmar by a raging civil war. Earlier this year, charities managing foreign food aid in the camps were forced to cancel rations for most of the refugees.
In March, hoping to make up for the US aid cuts, The Border Consortium (TBC), a Bangkok-based alliance of partners that provide food to displaced people in the camps, issued an “emergency funding appeal” to donors.
“Without immediate funding, they [the refugees] face a precarious and life-threatening situation,” it said.
However, the requested additional aid never came, prompting the Thai government to step in and announce a resolution last week.
Owing to the foreign aid cuts, it said in a statement, “the cabinet has made approval to grant special permission for this group of refugees to stay and work in the country to support themselves and their families.”
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), welcomed the move, adding that although the resolution only applied to a limited number of refugees, it could set a “regional benchmark” for a “rights-based refugee solution.” The UNHCR said it would advocate expanding the resolution, which currently applies to around 80,000 long-term refugees from Myanmar, to all of the refugees.
Decades living in dilapidated camps
For years, aid and advocacy groups have been urging the Thai government to give refugees working rights, arguing that this would allow them more self-sufficiency and economic participation.
The Thai camps in which refugees from Myanmar live started appearing along the border in the 1980s. Decades on, most homes are still no more than huts built of bamboo, wood and thatch, with few having electricity or running water.
With limited education and work opportunities inside the camps — and barred from studying or, until now, working outside — most people are forced to rely on foreign aid to keep from going hungry.
In a statement of her own last week, the UNHCR representative for Thailand, Tammi Sharpe, called the Thai government’s policy shift a “turning point” that would both allow the refugees to support themselves and stimulate the local economy.
TBC executive director, Leon de Riedmatten, also praised the government’s move to let the refugees live and work outside of the camps, calling it “a very positive decision.”
“They understood that TBC has not managed to find any other donors to really replace the Americans. So, either the government [has to] provide them with the food assistance, or you have to find an alternative, and this was certainly the best and the most realistic one,” he told DW.
A nutrition survey published by TBC earlier this year shows chronic malnutrition rates among children in the camps on the rise since 2022.
There is also a plan in the works to provide health care for the refugees.
“Allowing the refugees to work outside the camps is a landmark step, but approval of the Ministry of Public Health’s plan, including health insurance, will be important to ensure sustained good health of this population,” Darren Hertz, country director for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), told DW.
The IRC ran several health clinics inside the camps until its own funding dried up because of the Trump administration’s cuts this year. It is in the process of handing its operations over to local state-run hospitals.
“The days of the camps being supported with foreign aid may well be gone,” Hertz said, commending the Thai government for a “pragmatic” solution.
Cambodian workers leave Thailand amid border spat
De Riedmatten added that the government may also have been spurred by a sharp and sudden nosedive in Thailand’s migrant labor force.
According to Thailand’s Ministry of Labor, some 900,000 migrant workers from Cambodia have returned home since a deadly five-day border dispute in July.
While some non-government estimates put the figure at no more than 500,000, it’s still a large slice of the 3.1 million registered migrants the government says were working in Thailand as of 2024.
Ruttiya Bhula-or, an associate professor and labor economist at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, said the refugees in the border camps could help fill at least some of the gap the Cambodians have left in so-called “3D jobs,” those considered dirty, difficult or dangerous.
“It will definitely help because most of them are willing to work in the 3D sectors, and they will help fill the labor shortages [to] a certain level. But the number is not high,” she said.
Ruttiya added that the refugees have had relatively few opportunities to pick up useful work skills inside the camps, and may also be ill-suited for many of the jobs the Cambodians have left behind.
“The comparative advantage of the Cambodian workers are more likely to be fishing, construction. But the skills of the refugees might not really 100% fit to those,” she said.
The refugees, she added, are more likely to fill farm and entry-level service jobs in kitchens, warehouses and hotels.
She added that the planned work permits should help refugees already working outside the camps illegally to bargain for higher wages and take abusive employers to the authorities.
Myanmar refugees welcome opportunity
Eh Khu Moo, 32, fled Myanmar for Thailand as a teenager in 2005. He told DW he studied English, computers and motorcycle repair in the camps, and hopes to land a job.
“I am very happy to be able to work outside of the camps,” he said. “Working outside will be better for us to earn money and support our families.”
Tun, a refugee and camp official in his 60s, told DW he had been flooded with questions from younger men and women like Eh Khu Moo keen on how to properly take up the new work rights.
Having spent most, or even all, of their lives confined to the camps, and still afraid of returning to their war-torn homes, the refugees now see a new lifeline.
“Because in the camp there is no future. They want freedom,” he said.
Edited by: Wesley Rahn
