“Thailand is setting a regional precedent this month by giving refugees permission to work in the country in an effort to tackle aid cuts and its own labour shortages.

More than 87,000 refugees living in nine refugee camps along Thailand’s border with Myanmar have been totally reliant on handouts of food and foreign aid.

Many of them have not left the camps of makeshift shelters in the four decades since, as ethnic minorities in Myanmar, they were driven out by a violent military regime.

But now shrinking foreign aid budgets, especially from the US, which had supported the refugee camps, and a border dispute with Cambodia, has pushed Thailand to reconsider its approach.”

From The Guardian.