Urban Refugee Program, Mae Sot
JRS is the only NGO in Mae Sot, a northern border town in Tak Province, providing direct assistance to Burmese asylum seekers. The Urban Refugee Program in Mae Sot provides counseling, legal assistance and limited emergency financial and medical assistance to Burmese asylum seekers. We also support the material and practical needs of the Mae Sot Immigration Detention Center, community-based organizations, including a school and clinic, and affected local communities comprising of both Thai and displaced Karen people from Burma.
As a result of Thailand’s restrictive policies on Burmese asylum seekers in 2004, Burmese asylum seekers have no access to UNHCR refugee status determination procedures and few have been processed under Thailand’s Provincial Admissions Board. They have no access to the refugee camps or to international recognition of their status. JRS actively advocates on behalf of Burmese asylum seekers with the UNHCR, Thai authorities and other NGOs to have their asylum claims processed and to receive due international protection.
| Did you know? - Mae Sot is a border town famous for its trade in gems and hosts a mixed population of Thai citizens, and stateless and undocumented Burmese. The economic underbelly of Mae Sot is propped up by legal and undocumented Burmese migrant workers who rarely receive more than half of the minimum wage available for Thai people. In factories, shops, restaurants, and in the majority of rural plantations, people from Burma try to earn money that still proves more lucrative than employment inside Burma. Despite this, Burmese workers receive little in the way of workers’ rights and the majority represents the poorest of urban and rural border communities in Thailand. - Besides refugees, Thailand also has a large (often illegal) migrant workers population. The grand majority of these people are also Burmese; a large percentage is from neighbouring Laos and Cambodia. The general lack of labour rights for migrant workers results in hard living and working conditions at all levels. |