{"id":34194,"date":"2015-05-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ready-for-feedback3.com\/shape-history\/fmr\/hargrave\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T11:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T16:11:07","slug":"hargrave","status":"publish","type":"fmr_content","link":"https:\/\/www.fmreview.org\/ar\/climatechange-disasters\/hargrave\/","title":{"rendered":"Refugee-state distrust on the Thai-Burma border"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2011, following the installation of a nominally civilian government in Burma, Thai local media began to report rumours that Thai government officials were discussing plans to repatriate the approximately 100,000 refugees from Burma housed in camps on their territory. In 2015, four years on, despite continuing rumours concerning repatriation and declining aid to the Thai-Burma border camps, organised return operations have yet to begin.<\/p>\n

In many ways, this fact is to be celebrated. Burma\u2019s reform process remains incomplete, and in many cases the circumstances which caused refugees to flee remain. A return operation in current conditions would be likely to put returnees at risk of serious human rights violations. However, even if significant political change is secured in Burma, another serious barrier to the success of future repatriation operations exists, namely, pervasive distrust of the Burmese government among refugees in exile.<\/p>\n

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) published in 2012 a Framework for Voluntary Repatriation: Refugees from Myanmar in Thailand<\/em>. Perceived institutional encouragement to start repatriation was met by widespread criticism, both from Burma\u2019s well-organised civil society and from international NGOs, which emphasised that conditions in Burma were not yet suitable for large-scale repatriation. UNHCR has since consistently affirmed that operations are currently only at a pre-planning stage and that the institutional standard of voluntariness will be safeguarded in any repatriation process.<\/p>\n

It is this criterion of \u2018voluntariness\u2019, however, that becomes problematic. In 2013 a Karen Refugee Committee survey reported that only 27% of refugees in Tham Hin camp would return to Burma if peace and political stability were achieved.[1]<\/a> These findings suggest that if institutions want to safeguard voluntariness yet nonetheless wish to see refugees repatriate, more must be done than simply to ensure rights-respecting conditions within Burma. Additionally, it must be ensured that refugees want<\/strong> to return.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons why refugees in this context might resist return, even given significant political change in Burma \u2013 better economic prospects in Thailand and the sheer length of time spent in encampment, to name two. However, and crucially, it is likely that Burma\u2019s displaced persons still fundamentally distrust the Burmese government, and the very nature of this refugee-state distrust suggests that political change may not in itself be sufficient to make Burma\u2019s refugees voluntarily choose to return.<\/p>\n

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Why take distrust seriously?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Distrust has been characterised as an attitude adopted by individuals as a rational response to risk, in particular providing a means to protect against the disastrous consequences of misplaced trust.[2]<\/a> In the case of the refugee in exile, we see distrust towards a refugee\u2019s state of origin as a rational response to the risk involved in resuming dealings again with that state. However, an interesting feature of distrust is that, even if generated on a rational basis, it can take on non-rational features in that, once adopted, distrustful attitudes become a lens through which all subsequent developments are interpreted; distrust thereby often takes on a largely non-rational self-reinforcing tendency, rendering it a particularly difficult attitude to dislodge.<\/p>\n

This alone indicates that, in the case of the refugees on the Thai-Burma border, fundamental political change within Burma may not in itself be sufficient to dislodge distrust and stimulate voluntary wishes to repatriate among refugees. Facilitating repatriation requires us to directly engage with and address refugees\u2019 distrustful attitudes, acknowledging that they have rational origins and that (where appropriate) they may require substantial time and effort to renegotiate.<\/p>\n

Yet institutional repatriation frameworks offer little direct guidance on managing the thorny issue of refugee-state distrust. The 1996 UNHCR Handbook on Voluntary Repatriation<\/em> makes just three mentions of \u2018trust\u2019 and, in this document, the focus on trust is aligned with refugees\u2019 relationship with UNHCR and other information sources; there is no specific consideration of refugee-state trust. The more recent 2004 UNHCR Handbook on Repatriation and Reintegration Activities <\/em>also contains only three mentions of \u2018trust\u2019 but does as least situate trust in terms of government (rebuilding trust in local authorities and public institutions); however, these mentions relate to reintegration rather than repatriation. UNHCR\u2019s approach appears to be that trust in the state becomes relevant once the refugee has returned to her country of origin. There is no direct suggestion that refugee-state distrust might be a barrier to repatriation in itself and something worthy of consideration prior to return.<\/p>\n

Both UNHCR documents do contain some hint that some such obstacle might exist but this is couched in terms of \u2018confidence\u2019, not \u2018trust\u2019. The 1996 Repatriation Handbook<\/em> makes twenty-two references to confidence building, over half of which refer to how refugees in exile might \u2013 prior to return \u2013 develop confidence in the situation in their country of origin and their future treatment. In the 2004 Repatriation and Reintegration Handbook<\/em> a third of the references to \u2018confidence building\u2019 consider pre-return confidence building in this sense.<\/p>\n

However, this focus on confidence building fails to encapsulate the complex nature of distrustful refugee-state attitudes prior to repatriation. The idea of building confidence implies that the solution is simply to make refugees sufficiently aware of the objective facts of the case, through recommended activities such as information campaigns, go-and-see visits and legal guarantees. However, this focus ignores the way in which distrust, as an attitude distinct from lacking confidence, pervasively affects the way in which the \u2018facts\u2019 are likely to be interpreted.<\/p>\n

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Renegotiating distrust<\/strong><\/p>\n

To some extent, this policy deficit might be excused by the fact that addressing the complex obstacle of distrust requires the renegotiation of intensely personal attitudes \u2013 a clearly momentous task. However, there are some direct strategies that can be implemented to encourage refugees to reconsider their distrust of their state of origin. While these efforts do not represent fundamentally new approaches, they can gain new strategic importance as part of a concerted focus on refugee-state distrust.<\/p>\n

Strategies include:<\/p>\n