As of 2026. UNHCR reports over 80,000 refugees in the nine shelters as of 2026; the figure moves with new arrivals from the post-2021 conflict in Myanmar and with the 2025 change allowing some camp residents to work.
Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and has since 1984 accommodated people fleeing conflict in eastern Myanmar in fenced camps that it designates "temporary shelters", administered by the Ministry of Interior with services delivered by NGOs. Residents historically could not work legally, could not leave the camp area without permission, and risked arrest and deportation if found outside; many have lived this way for three decades and roughly half of the present population was born inside the camps. Large-scale resettlement to third countries between 2005 and 2014 moved more than 100,000 people abroad and reduced the camp population, but resettlement has since slowed sharply. In August 2025 the Thai cabinet approved a resolution allowing long-staying refugees from Myanmar to work legally, which UNHCR welcomed as a turning point while noting that it reaches only a limited number of people; work cards became available from October 2025 and take-up has been slow. A suspension of United States funding in early 2025 cut health and food services in the camps, and Thai authorities adopted a staged plan in August 2025 aiming at camp consolidation and eventual closure, including the merger of the two Karenni camps in Mae Hong Son. From mid-May 2026 the authorities tightened restrictions on residents who do not hold work authorisation, preventing them from leaving the camps.
Thai authorities confining Karen, Karenni and other refugees from Myanmar to designated border shelters under a policy that until 2025 barred them from working or leaving the camps
The camps grew from a few thousand Karen in 1984 to a registered and unregistered population of roughly 140,000-150,000 at their height in the mid-to-late 2000s, according to UNHCR and The Border Consortium. Third-country resettlement from 2005 onwards moved more than 96,000 people by mid-2014, about three quarters of them to the United States, leaving a verified caseload of 110,607 in December 2014; UNHCR now reports over 80,000 remaining in the nine shelters.
No significant direct death toll; the harm here is indefinite confinement rather than killing. UNHCR records roughly 81,000 people in the nine border 'temporary shelters', about 47% of whom were born in the camps, some families having been confined for four decades. Thailand's cabinet resolution of August 2025, welcomed by UNHCR, granted long-staying refugees from Myanmar the right to work, ending the core of the encampment policy.
Thailand