လုပ္စားေတြေၾကာင့္တကယ္ဒုကၡေရာက္သူေတြ ဘံုေပ်ာက္ေနၾကျပီ

Refugee resettlement temporarily closed, now under review

The Irrawaddy Magazine Sunday, November 2, 2008

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, in October temporarily suspended its resettlement program for asylum seekers in nine refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border in order to carry out a thorough review.

The move is believed to be in response to reports that some Burmese seeking to migrate to Western countries were using the services of brokers to win recognition as refugees so they could take advantage of the program. The scheme also allegedly involved some camp authorities, members of nongovernmental organizations and UN staff.

According to sources, brokers enabled Burmese without refugee status to resettle overseas for a fee of between 50,000 and 100,000 baht (US $1,500-3,000). One recently published report in a Burmese-language newspaper based in Thailand said that a family paid about 300,000 baht ($9,000) to resettle in the US after moving from Rangoon to the Noh Poe refugee camp in Thailand’s Umphang Province.

Such abuses have inevitably affected many legitimate asylum seekers. Sources say that some refugees who applied to join the resettlement program were rejected because their names were already on the list of applicants who had been resettled, apparently as a result of identity theft.

The sources added that others, who have already been approved, are now stranded in the camps, as the UNHCR conducts its investigation into these and other irregularities.