AN ANALYSIS OF REFUGEE POLICY: A CASE STUDY ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE THAI GOVERNMENT TOWARD URBAN REFUGEES

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In Southeast Asia, Thailand has been a major destination for refugees and asylum-seekers who have fled their homelands due to war, generalized violence, internal strife and other serious violations of human rights. The Royal Thai government has provided de facto asylum to millions of refugees from forty different nationalities. In Thailand, refugees and asylum-seekers are permitted to live in controlled areas or camps referred to as ‘temporary shelters’. The status of these individuals remains unclear as they are unable to reside in the country over a long-term period.

More than 2,000 refugees and asylum-seekers were identified in Bangkok and the surrounding areas. Urban refugees and asylum-seekers tend to be influenced by some of the same push and pull factors. These factors can sometimes make it difficult to identify them amongst the massive population of illegal migrants. They are often faced with serious human rights violations rather than those camp refugees because they are unrecognized and they lack the protection of the Thai government.
Thailand’s refugee policies are founded on national security principles, which take into account the relationship between the states and national interests, rather than solve the problem of refugees themselves. The policy is one absent of a rights-controlled framework for the protection of the refugees, but it's based on the concept of a migration-control oriented approach, thus it makes the lack of a mechanism to handle and deal with the problems of refugee as sustainable and permanent. It remains fragmented, unpredictable, inadequate and ad hoc, leaving refugees unnecessarily vulnerable to arbitrary and abusive treatment. The lack of a legal framework leaves refugees and asylum seekers in a precarious state, making their stay in Thailand uncertain and their status unclear. The government does not have a specific policy to implement with urban refugees, but applied existing refugee policy to these people. Often the policy becomes an unexpected tool for authorities to abuse the refugee’s rights by arresting and deport them without any sufficient reasons even while the refugee is holding the certificate from UNHCR.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Dedication..............................................I
• Acknowledgement........................................II
• Abstract...............................................IV
• List of Acronyms ..................................... VI
• Chapter I: Introduction... ............................ 1
• 1.1 Background..........................................1
• 1.2 Research Question...................................8
• 1.3 The objective of research...........................8
• 1.4 Research Methodology................................9
• 1.5 Thesis Structure...................................10
• Chapter II: Literature review..........................12
• 2.1 Refugee Conception.................................12
• 2.2 Who is an Urban Refugee?...........................17
• 2.3 Protection and rights of refugees..................19
• Chapter III: Refugees in Thailand......................22
• 3.1 Refugees situation in Thailand.....................22
• 3.2 Urban refugees living in Thailand..................32
• 3.3 The nature of urban displacement...................35
• 3.4 Lack of protection of urban refugees...............41
• Chapter IV: Rights of refugees in Thailand.............45
• 4.1 Rights of refugees under the 1951
• Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
• or its 1967 Protocol...................................46
• 4.2 Policy and management toward refugees in
• Thailand...............................................54
• 4.3 The formulation of refugee policy..................59
• 4.4 Thailand’s regulations and domestic law
• relating to the rights of refugees.....................66
• Chapter V: The approach to implement on refugees in accordance with the human rights principle.............73
• 5.1 Practices based on Non-refoulement
• principle..............................................76
• 5.2 The role of the security agency on protection
• rights of Refugees.....................................80
• 5.3 The role of Civil Society and NGOs in
• protecting the rights of urban refugees................83
• 5.4 The solution for refugees and human rights
• practices..............................................91
• Chapter VI: Conclusion.................................94
• 6.1 Policy and action recommendation...................98
• Appendix: States Parties to the 1951 Convention
• or its 1967 Protocol..................................101
• Bibliography..........................................106