follow up

Well, for the moment at least, things have calmed. Clashes continue off and on, but farther inside, where fighting is not uncommon, and residents are accustomed to hiding in the jungle, having no access to an international border which magically turns them in to a refugee. By last Wednesday evening the last refugees has left the temporary sites, and either faded into homes of friends on the Thai side, or actually returned back across the river. Fighting farther south brought several thousand people across the border at Wah Lay, but they were immediately sent back by the Thai military. They crossed again in the night, but have now been returned, and for the moment, fighting has calmed there as well. The largest collections of IDP remain in Mon State, still further south, but their needs are being seen to out of Sankhlaburi, the closest Thai border town to that area.

The events of the past week have, however, crystallized fears that have been long harbored, of increased conflict along the border, and ever increasing waves of refugees spilling across the borders. After the returns, INGOs and CBOs alike continued meeting, to lay out contingency plans for next time.

I still can't quite get over the contrast - between the rush of aid that met the refugees who made it to Mae Sot, compared with the fates of the majority of conflict affected people - internally displaced, with little aid or support after they flee their homes, carving out places to hide in the jungle. Reports like 'Chronic Emergency' and 'Diagnosis:Critical' have documented the strong correlations between displacement and adverse health outcomes, including increase incidence of malaria, childhood malnutrition, childhood mortality, and landmine injury.

There are 500,000 IDP in eastern Burma, and its the communities themselves that have provided what little aid reaches them. Organizations like the Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People, the Karen Department of Health and Welfare, the Backpack Health Worker Team, the Shan Health Committee, and the Mon Relief and Development Committee, and the Mon National Health Department. Groups that bring their supplies in from Thailand, and often bring their medics and relief workers to Thailand for training, which is how they got the name 'cross-border', although the workers themselves are form the communities they serve, where they live and work. They provide the only aid to many of the border areas, which cannot be accessed from Rangoon. They are filling the gap between the INGOs waiting on this side of the border and those working in Rangoon. These are the groups that my organization is working to support. Although groups in Rangoon are working hard to increase the humanitarian space in the country, full access is still a long way off, and in the meantime, there are a lot of IDP in need.

Chronic Emergency
Diagnosis: Critical