IOM Resettles 50,000 Myanmar Refugees Since 2004
A 23-year-old primary school teacher with a 20-year-old wife and
two-year-old daughter will this weekend become the 50,000th refugee
from Myanmar resettled by IOM from remote camps on the Thai-Myanmar
border to a third country.
The ethnic Karenni family, who have been accepted for
resettlement in the US and will start new lives in Camden, New
Jersey next week, will leave Baan Mai Nai Soi refugee camp, also
known as Site 1, in Thailand's northern Mae Hong Son province, on
Sunday.
"I have great hopes for my daughter Naw Gay. She will go to a
good school and get a good education there. She has no future
here," says Pray Meh, 20, who formerly worked in a library and
taught kindergarten in the camp, and whose sister is already in the
US.
Husband Plu Reh, who has lived in Site 1 since 1996, taught
health and social studies to 3rd and 4th graders in one of the
primary schools in the camp, which still shelters some 18,000
mainly Karenni refugees from Myanmar.
In 2008 the US offered to resettle up to 50,000 refugees from Site
1 and three other camps in Mae Hong Son province. The decision
followed earlier US decisions to offer resettlement to up to
100,000 other refugees from camps to the south in Tak and
Kanchanaburi provinces.
Plu Reh and Pray Meh, who got married in 2006 and speak some
English, as well as Karenni, Thai and Burmese, decided to apply and
were accepted. Both subsequently attended IOM cultural orientation
classes to prepare them for life in America.
The family, who will receive a formal send-off, a certificate
and the gift of a mobile phone from IOM Thailand Chief of Mission
Monique Filsnoel in Bangkok on Monday, represent a milestone in
IOM's massive movement of Myanmar refugees from the Thai border
camps.
This year IOM Thailand has resettled over 7,000 refugees
accepted for resettlement from nine camps. The ongoing operation,
which includes medical screening, cultural orientation and travel
arrangements to eleven resettlement countries, follows over 17,000
departures in 2008, 14,600 in 2007 and over 64,000 since 2004.
While the largest number of refugees have been accepted by the
US, other resettlement countries now include Australia, Canada,
Denmark, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the
Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
IOM's 34-year history of refugee resettlement from Thailand
began in 1975 in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, when it helped
nearly half a million Indochinese refugees from Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia to leave the country and start new lives abroad. It works
closely with the Royal Thai government, UNHCR and the governments
of resettlement countries.
For more information and a fact sheet detailing IOM Thailand's
resettlement operations, please contact:
Chris Lom
IOM Bangkok
Tel. +66.819275215
E-mail:
"mailto:clom@iom.int">clom@iom.int