Read the RFA cover of this subject in Burma.
Myanmar residents have been forced to flee their homes for camps on the other side of the border in Thailand are faced with growing difficulties in international help, with more than 108,000 people who are now struggling to access stable food supplies, civil society organizations at Radio Free on Wednesday said on Wednesday.
Previously, ethnic, Karen of the state of Kayin in eastern Myanmar, faced with brutal village burns and air strikes by the junta, fled en masse in camps in Thailand, where many have lived for years in search of refugee status without access to jobs or legal documents.
The difficult life of residents of the camps intensified when the US government has reduced the Budget of the American Agency for International Development, or USAID.
The United States, through the USAID, was the largest donor, contributing to around 69% of camp financing at the beginning of 2025. This important support facilitated essential services, in particular health care, food distribution and sanitation, often implemented by NGOs such as the International Living Committee and the Border Consortium, according to the organization for world peace.
“Because help donations have continued not to arrive, refugee situations will become worse than before, because they have no documents,” said the spokesperson for the Karen Peace Support Network Cherry, who only gave one name.
“They have no authorization to come from the camp without identification, passport or documents of Thai citizenship, they have a lot of difficulty looking for jobs.”
Children of five and under have their food budget reduced to only five hundred Americans per day, while those over five years old will receive eight hundred per day in allocated foods, according to a press release co-published by 20 groups of Karen on Wednesday, adding that more than a million people in the state of Kayin and neighboring areas are affected by aid cuts.
“Even before these drastic reductions, the food provisions were already lower than the minimum required for survival,” the groups said in their declaration, assigning it not only to US budget cuts, but constantly decreased the international support for Karen inappropriate.
“These help reductions could not reach a worst time. The Burmese army continues to target houses, schools, plantations, religious sites and medical centers with air strikes and artillery. ”
The groups have called for a reversal of long -term aid reductions for Myanmar residents of Thailand, existing donors to increase their funding, so that Bangkok grants them the right to work and so that the country puts the restrictions to the delivery of cross -border aid to areas not controlled by the Myanmar army.
While USAID was the main donor, other countries like Australia also contributed to the financing of the camps, but to a lesser extent.
Following the dissolution of a large part of the USAID programming in Myanmar and Thailand, civil society organizations dependent on their funding were forced to reduce programming and to dismiss staff, while others have attracted alarms from the potential increase in HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and vaccine preventable diseases.
Despite an extended ceasefire until May 31 by the military junta who seized the power during a coup in 2021, the air strikes continued, killing more than 200 people and moving tens of thousands. The ceasefire was declared after the earthquake of March 28 which cost the life of more than 3,700 people in Myanmar.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Published by Mike Firn and Tajun Kang.