Burmese Refugee Youth Prevent Addiction & Violence

While the Burmese Refugee Camps on the Thai/Burma Border enter their 3rd decade of existence, young people who were born in the camps are now facing a future of return to Burma.  This will likely be forced upon them in the next two or three years, despite the high talk of Voluntary Repatriation with Dignity, espoused by UNHCR.

These young people who whose only home has been a refugee camp are at a loss as to how to return to a home they have never known.  Their influences have all been from the Thailand side of the border, including Thai youth culture.  Their parents may either be looking forward to go home to a place they remember as children as beautiful and peaceful, until they were forced to run leaving behind the ones who fell to the Burmese Military, their villages burned and everything lost.  Or they be very fearful of returning, as the Burmese Military is still all over their precious land of Kawthoolei (Karen State).

The refugee camps are now a chaotic and unstable place, where rations have been cut and cut and cut again.  Where International donors and organizations have abandoned them and where life has become even more unbearable.  Young people are at higher risk for addiction and suicide as hopelessness and fear overide the events of daily life.

DARE Network continues as a local organization to be available to all refugees who ask for assistance for substance abuse.  Young people in particular continue to come for help with the trap of addiction, as more and stronger drugs enter the camps from Drug cartels in Burma.

Thanks to your support we can and will stay with the refugee youth through this tough transition and beyond.