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2006-04

Canada’s New Government Welcomes Burmese Refugees

Ottawa, June 20, 2006 — On the occasion of World Refugee Day, the Honourable Monte Solberg, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and Jahanshah Assadi, Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), are pleased to announce Canada’s pivotal role in an international effort to provide solutions for Burmese (Myanmar) refugees stranded in camps in Thailand for more than a decade.

“Welcoming these refugees, who have endured a prolonged state of limbo in terrible conditions, is in the best humanitarian tradition of Canada,” said Minister Solberg. “As Canadians, we look forward to helping them rebuild secure lives and join our society.”

A group of 810 refugees, predominantly of the Karen ethnic group, are expected to resettle in Canada later this year. The 810 are from an estimated 140,000 Burmese refugees—the largest refugee population in Southeast Asia—which the UN Refugee Agency has identified as being in a particularly precarious situation.

The UNHCR has been collaborating closely with Canada and other countries to resettle groups of refugees found to be disproportionately more at risk than the general refugee population. The groups identified are those who have suffered severe persecution, including torture, imprisonment, forced labour, the burning of villages and forced relocation in their homeland.

“We were delighted at Canada’s swift response to our group submission of 810 Karen refugees, and impressed at the smooth and efficient manner in which the Canadian selection team conducted the interviews in a remote refugee camp environment,” said Jahanshah Assadi, the UNHCR’s representative in Canada.

CIC will be working closely with Canada’s volunteer groups to assist in the settlement and integration of these refugees.

Other countries that have responded to the UNHCR’s call by offering to resettle Burmese refugees include the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. World Refugee Day is internationally recognized and celebrated each year on June 20.

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For more information (media only):

Lesley Harmer
Director of Communications
Minister’s Office
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
(613) 954-1064

Marina Wilson
Media Relations
Communications Branch
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
(613) 941-7021

Backgrounder
Group Resettlement to Canada
Karen Refugees in Mae La Oon Camp, Thailand

Karen Refugees in Thailand

A solution is in sight for thousands of refugees from Burma (also referred to as Myanmar) who have been “warehoused” in camps for decades and are currently accommodated in nine camps in Thailand. Following an agreement by the Royal Thai Government to allow large-scale resettlement of Burmese refugees, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has identified 13,000 of an estimated refugee population of 140,000 in need of priority resettlement. The groups identified are those facing a particularly precarious existence and who have suffered severe persecution, including torture, imprisonment, forced labour, the burning of villages and forced relocation in their homeland.

Eight hundred and ten Karen refugees have been accepted by Canada. This is the first time since the resettlement of Indochinese refugees that Canada has accepted a significant number of refugees from Thailand. Other countries offering to resettle large numbers of Burmese refugees are the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Group Resettlement of Karen Refugees

The refugees accepted for resettlement to Canada are among an estimated 14,000 who have been confined in the Mae La Oon camp in Mae Hong Son Province of Thailand. They are predominantly of the Karen ethnic group. The majority fled to Thailand in 1995 following a major offensive by the Burmese government army against the Karen National Union (KNU). A small portion of the population has been in Thailand since as early as the 1960s, having lived in sporadic settlements until the camps were formed by the Thai government in the late nineties.

Of the nine camps in Thailand, Mae La Oon has the dubious distinction of being the most remote and the most difficult for aid workers to reach, and of having the worst living conditions. The camp is extremely overcrowded. Refugee dwellings are built on steep hillsides that are susceptible to landslides. The lack of appropriate sanitation and water facilities for a population of 14,000 creates a situation where serious public health risks are endemic, and where other social problems associated with such conditions are reaching alarming levels. It is because of the worsening conditions in Mae La Oon that the UNHCR has pushed for group resettlement from Thailand as a matter of priority.

Less than a year after being approached by the UNHCR, over 500 refugees from this group are scheduled to arrive in Canada in August and September, with the remaining 300 or so to follow late this year and early in 2007.

This resettlement project exemplifies the level of cooperation that exists between the UNHCR and Citizenship and Immigration Canada, as well as other participating countries. It also exemplifies the crucial role played by our domestic partners, such as participating service organizations and private sponsoring groups.

The first group of government-assisted refugees will be settling in 10 communities stretching across the country from Vancouver to Charlottetown. The remaining refugees will benefit from the support of the private sponsorship community. Sponsoring groups from small towns as well as large cities have responded favourably and enthusiastically to providing support.

Group Profile and Characteristics

The 810 refugees accepted by Canada include:

• women and their families who are particularly vulnerable because the woman is a single head of household, or who require special attention because of sexual or gender-based violence, social ostracism, family problems or other circumstances;
• former leaders of political opposition groups and their families who require special protection given their relatively high-profile activities and the fact that the Burmese authorities are likely aware of their identity and their residence in the camps in Thailand;
• individuals and their families who have serious medical or psychological conditions for whom appropriate treatment is not available in the camp, and for whom resettlement would offer a substantially better way of life;
• ethnic minorities who suffer discrimination in the camp, such as the ethnic Burman, who are often distrusted by the Karen and suspected of being spies for the Burmese government, and in particular the camp leadership and senior members of the KNU; and
• individuals and their families who have close relatives in Canada.

UNHCR’s Rationale for Resettlement

As an instrument of international protection, resettlement guarantees the legal and physical protection of refugees. In some cases, resettlement may provide the only means of preserving human rights, particularly in the context of a protracted refugee situation such as the one that exists on the Thai-Burmese border, where Burmese nationals have endured a prolonged period of ”warehousing” in closed refugee camps, and where restricted mobility, enforced idleness and dependency on humanitarian assistance force refugees to place their lives on indefinite hold.

For these reasons, the UNHCR finds that the refugees in the Mae La Oon camp are in need of resettlement on the basis of legal and physical protection requirements and because of the lack of local integration prospects in Thailand. As neither voluntary repatriation nor local integration is available, resettlement is the only viable solution for this population at this stage.

Background on Group Resettlement

The group resettlement approach taken by Canada was first piloted in 2003 with Sudanese and Somali refugees from camps in Kenya. It differs from the usual case-by-case processing in that it allows the UNHCR to submit large groups with a uniform refugee claim, a clearly defined membership and particular vulnerabilities or protection needs—groups that have remained in a protracted refugee situation and that can neither safely return home nor integrate into their host country.

Under normal resettlement processing, Canadian visa officials are required to conduct individual case-by-case status interviews to determine if the refugees do indeed meet the criteria set forth in the 1951 refugee convention. Under group processing, Canadian officials skip the status interviews, focusing instead on the mandatory credibility, identity, security and medical admissibility checks.