THAILAND – On February 8, Thai Foreign Minister Panpree Phahitthanukorn. announced that a humanitarian assistance corridor for refugees fleeing the war in the Thai-Myanmar border region will be opened within a month and support will begin.
Although the program for cross-border assistance has not been specifically disclosed yet due to it not being completed, it is said that the program will only benefit 20,000 refugees who have been displaced from the side of the Thaung Yin River in Tak District, which is adjacent to Karen State. Pan Buri admitted that the Thai side will be responsible for providing support on the Thai side of the Thaung Yin River, and the junta council will be responsible for the aid support issue for the Burmese side.
These grants will be provided with the ASEAN Humanitarian Coordination Center for Disaster Management and Thailand and Burmese Red Cross community serving as witnesses.
A Myanmar, UN aid worker living in Mae Sot, commented that these aid will only become a form of pretense, which has been ineffective in the past.
This aid program, which was submitted as an initial proposal by the Thai government to ASEAN, when compared against the displaced population in Myanmar of 2.6 million refugees, as per UN data, is a very small amount, said NUG spokesperson Nay Phone Latt.
The number of displaced refugees living on the Thai-Myanmar border is very large, and the program will only help about 20,000 people, so there is nothing special about it. Since the Burmese junta council, which is not an official government, has blocked the arrival of foreign aid since the Covid-19 period, putting the aid for the refugees on the Burmese side in their hands is only helping the junta council. NUG spokesperson Nay Phone Latt protested that it would be more beneficial to distribute the aid via the ethnic armed groups in the border area.