Population and censuses
Population
Myanmar migrants nickled and dimed in Thailand
Migrant rights groups have slammed the latest strategy to regularise undocumented Myanmar workers in Thailand as a money-making scheme. The current efforts to verify the Myanmar migrants and supply those eligible with passports has yet to even get under way, as the process is still mired in ...
Verification program begins but most migrants frozen out
Immigration teams from Myanmar have arrived in Thailand to conduct a long-awaited nationality verification process meant to regularise the status of over half a million workers caught in immigration limbo. The current plan involves sending out newly arrived representatives from the labour ministry, immigration department and ...
Why Southeast Asia's refugee crisis matters
The Diplomat, in collaboration with concerned stakeholders around the world, is launching a new series entitled “Southeast Asia: Refugees in Crisis.” In May 2015, thousands of Rohingya refugees from the Rakhine State of Myanmar and economic migrants from Bangladesh were found stranded in the Strait of ...
Lao officials keen to send illegal foreign workers packing
Local officials have been promising for several years to send illegal foreign workers back home but so far this hasn’t happened. Director General of Labour Management Department of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Mr Phongsaysack Inthalath spoke to Vientiane Times at a meeting in Vientiane ...
Six Montagnards seek refugee status in Cambodian capital
Six ethnic Montagnard Christians who fled Vietnam and illegally entered Cambodia to seek refugee status have arrived safely in the capital Phnom Penh, the provincial coordinator for Adhoc has said. The coordinator said the group fled Gia Lai province in Vietnam’s Central Highlands on 16 July and arrived ...
165 Bangladeshi boatpeople due for July 22 repatriation: Arakan official
The Burmese government says it will repatriate 165 out of what it claims are more than 500 Bangladeshi nationals who were found abandoned at sea off Burma’s coast in May and have been living at temporary camps in Arakan State. Soe Naing, deputy director of the ...
A dozen Montagnards agree to repatriation from Cambodia to Vietnam
A dozen ethnic Montagnards who sought refugee status in Cambodia willingly returned to their home country of Vietnam Thursday after Hanoi gave assurances it would not punish or discriminate against them, according to rights group and United Nations officials. The 12 were part of a group ...
Myanmar navy rescues 102 boat people
The Myanmar navy has rescued more than a hundred Bangladeshi boat people from an islet near the country’s southernmost region, an official report said on 14 July. They were left on the small islet in early June and the Myanmar navy is searching the area for ...
Thailand and Laos discuss anti-human trafficking campaign
Thai and international agencies have convened a meeting to discuss ways to bolster efforts against human trafficking along the border. The Ministry of Social Development and Human Security’s Anti-Human Trafficking Division, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the non-governmental organisation Alliance Anti-Trafic met to discuss ...
In Myanmar, a rising exodus but no trafficking arrests
Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled Rakhine since the start of the year, joining perilous journeys on the boats of human traffickers through the Bay of Bengal. But local officials say no one has been arrested for trafficking in the Myanmar state that supplies the ...