Uneven Humanitarianism: Abandoned Refugees along the Thai-Myanmar Border

Abstract

This essay considers the case of uneven humanitarian aid distribution along the Thai-Myanmar border, where forcibly displaced migrants from Myanmar have been abandoned by the UNHCR and international humanitarian organizations. Based upon long-term ethnographic fieldwork along the Thai-Myanmar border amongst Tai migrants from the Shan State in Myanmar, I attend to the effects of the inequitable distribution of rights and privileges in an international humanitarian system that is predicated on the neoliberal logic of uneven development. After two centuries of British colonial occupation and later Burman authoritarian rule, the ethnic minority groups along the Thai-Myanmar border are now facing another crisis – that of abandonment as NGOs search for new and more pressing humanitarian disasters elsewhere. The essay addresses a concept I call uneven humanitarianism as a neocolonial condition for peoples living in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands by specifically focusing on Tai peoples who are living in unofficial refugee camps that lost foreign funding in 2017. I argue that the ad hoc treatment and eventual abandonment of these vulnerable groups – that are currently in the midst of the world’s most protracted civil war and displacement situation – constitutes a failure of the “responsibility to protect” humanitarian project.

Humanitarian Ration Cuts: Impacts on Vulnerable Groups

“…Men also often leave the camp during the rainy season to work on their fields across the border, despite the risks involved (Horstmann et al, 2019). Many refugees living on the Thai-Burma border and humanitarian organisations working with them have been concerned that the reduction in food aid and refocus on projects dealing with the return of migrants would lead to unsafe return (Sebro, 2016). Refugees cited fears of imprisonment and fear of torture upon their return to Myanmar, in addition to the lack of any means of survival if they were to return (Sebro, 2016).…”

Interacting with global refugee complexity and wresting control: Shan refugees and migrants in Thailand

“…Ethnic populations crossing porous borders to flee conflicts between ethnic armed groups and the Myanmar army and fleeing economic hardship from Myanmar to Thailand have been a long‐time transnational issue for northern provinces of Thailand. Several scholars have done remarkable works on the Shan state, people, and workers, such as Tannenbaum (2007, 1995), Buadang (2011), Chaiya et al (2017), Ting (2018), and Sebro (2016). Anthropological and ethnographical works portrayed the lives of Shan at the borders or in Thailand.…”