OPINION
Refugee-led governance in the camps on the Thai-Myanmar border is holding communities together amid cuts in international funding, raising the question of why refugees are left out of decisions.
By MAXIMILLIAN MORCH
The Karen Refugee Committee was formed in 1975, almost a decade before the first international NGO arrived at the Thai-Myanmar border to help refugees from Myanmar. When formal camps were established in 1984, international NGOs provided food and supplies, but it was the KRC that helped organise and distribute aid.
Whenever waves of new arrivals crossed the border, it was refugee committees that registered new arrivals, found food and shelter for them and helped organise and lead the camps. For over four decades, the governance of some of the world’s longest-standing refugee camps has been led by refugees themselves at almost every level.
In August last year, the Thai government passed a resolution allowing eligible camp residents the right to work outside camps for the first time, marking a significant policy shift. For a population that has lived under severe movement restrictions, access to work represented a genuine path to self-reliance and a life less dependent on humanitarian assistance that has, in recent years, proven far less reliable than anyone had hoped.
The collapse of humanitarian funding from the United States early last year made the fragility of refugees’ situation visible in the most direct way. Food rations were cut and INGO services were withdrawn, in some cases abruptly and without adequate consultation.
Communities found themselves self-financing water supplies, waste collection, electricity and hospital transport through internal contributions, at the very moment when their food security was declining.
In response to these cuts, refugee governance systems have taken on a massive increase in responsibility, yet with a fraction of the resources. Both keeping refugees safe in the camps and ensuring the right-to-work transition have been successful.
Camp committees are visiting farms and factories to identify employment opportunities and are organising pre-departure training. They are monitoring worksites, running complaints mechanisms and mediating between refugees and employers. They are digging wells, coordinating rubbish collection, fundraising for hospital referrals and covering dialysis costs.
They are addressing rising cases of sexual and gender-based violence, as well as increasing child neglect as parents leave for work, and growing drug and alcohol problems among young refugees with limited prospects. They are absorbing much of what the humanitarian system previously provided with a fraction of their budget.
And yet, despite this, many committees report being shut out of the decisions that directly shape their work.
In recent conversations with refugee and camp committees, members describe learning about major funding decisions through the news and being listed as partners in INGO-funding applications without being informed or consulted about how those funds would be used.
They describe service withdrawals happening without explanation, facility handovers made without documentation, and training duplicated across organisations without any coordination.
“What NGOs are doing is not for the needs of refugees, it’s for the needs of themselves to continue their job. It’s not focused on the real needs of the community,” a refugee committee member told me.
Localisation has been one of the most prominent debates in humanitarian policy in recent years. Decision-making power, resources and leadership should shift toward local actors, including displaced communities. This idea has been endorsed in countless frameworks, white papers and policy commitments.
Yet refugee-led governance structures on the Thai-Myanmar border are reporting that this hasn’t happened and doubt whether that commitment has any practical meaning.
The KRC predates practically every INGO on the border. It has more institutional knowledge, community trust and contextual understanding than any external organisation.
The same is true of the Karenni Refugee Committee and the camp committees that together govern a population of over 100,000 people across nine camps.
These are not organisations that need to be built from scratch or developed into readiness over a period of years. They are mature institutions that have governed through conflict, pandemics and funding crises, often without the resourcing their responsibilities warrant.
When humanitarian funding wanes, these organisations offer not just the most effective model for distributing aid, but also the most cost-effective by far.
Humanitarian funding is contracting globally. The model of large-scale, externally managed refugee assistance is under pressure in every protracted displacement context. Localisation and the strengthening of civil society and refugee-led organisations will be essential to ensuring that limited funding is directed toward essential needs.
It is the only credible answer to how we do more with less.
However, for this transition to work, refugee committees need to be in the room when funding decisions are made. They need transparent, timely information about what is being reduced and why. They need stipends that reflect the scale of what they are asked to do. And they need the humanitarian system to accept that decisions about refugees cannot, in good conscience, continue to be made without them.
Maximillian Morch is the head of programme development at The Border Consortium, a humanitarian organisation working in the refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border and southeastern Myanmar.
