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THAILAND
Struggling
Vera den Otter
Life for Xiong Pa (not his real name),
a Laotian refugee, is not easy. His family,
he says, does not have enough
food to eat breakfast everyday. The rest of
the time they usually just eat rice.
He recalls, “we asked the Bangkok Refugee
Centre (BRC, a local NGO partner of
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency) to give
us some money, as the subsistence allowance
they give us is not enough to buy food.
Of the 3,500 baht (approximately 70 euros)
my brother and I are given, 2,500 goes on
rent, the other 1,000 baht is spent on things
like soap, transport and the like. We cannot
afford to spend it on food. The last 10 days
of the month are the worst, the money runs
out quickly, and we have to skip more meals.
Since we don’t have money for clothes, we
go to JRS and they give us some”.
Xiong’s kitchen
Xiong’s living room
Xiong Pa lives in a crowded room with eight
other family members: three of his brothers
and their wives and children. The children
do not get the variety of food they so
need while growing up. Like Xiong, the two
eldest, 12 and 15 years old, only eat two
meals of plain rice per day. They have
learned to live with it and do not complain.
His younger nephew though, cries day and
night of hunger, but all the family can give
him is some rice soup with a bit of sugar.
Xiong says his family is lucky because they
live above a restaurant owned by their landlord.
Sometimes they are able to receive
food other than rice in exchange for work.
They also have relatives who occasionally
give them a little extra money when it can
be spared. He knows at least 10 other families
who receive nothing extra and suffer
much more than his does.
Before the subsistence allowances were cut
by 30 percent on 31 August 2005, UNHCR
gave him and his brother 5,400 baht. Xiong
says his life was okay then; he could buy
food and sometimes clothes. When he first
heard UNHCR was going to cut the subsistence
allowance, he was hoping they
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