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 Home Overseas Projects Thai-Burma Border Projects
MAP Foundation
MAP works with Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA to support Burmese refugees working in Thailand. Because they are not able to register (as Thailand does not acknowledge their refugee status) these working refugees have little protection. MAP and Union Aid Abroad APHEDA assist Burmese refugees in areas of health and safety.
Staff of the MAP Emergency House for sick or injured refugees
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The Migrant Assistance Programme was established to assist the thousands of migrants working in Thailand. Its aim was to promote the welfare of migrants and help them to overcome language barriers and other difficulties that hindered access to services. In 2002, as the range of activities that the Migrant Assistance Programme was participating in expanded, it became the MAP Foundation. The Foundation aims to work "towards a vision of the future where people from Burma will have the right to stay and the right to migrate, where migration will be facilitated by formal agreements and with support from trade unions, NGOs and GOs and where migrant workers rights will be respected." To facilitate this, the Foundation advocates for policies that effect migrant workers to be formulated and implemented from a human rights and labour rights perspective, for increased awareness of the situation of migrant workers in host countries and a reduction in discrimination, and focuses on migrant worker communities capacity to indentify and respond to challenges.
Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA is a partner organisation with the MAP Foundation, and worked with the Foundation on the "Act Against Abuse: Making More Possible Project". This project enabled MAP to work with and support migrants to address violations of their rights. Within this project, a series of "Women Exchange" meetings were held, and groups of women migrant workers devised a ten-step guideline for responding to sexual or physical violence called the "Automatic Response Mechanism". The MAP Foundation also informs workers about the Thai legal system, and workers have taken their cases to the Labour Protection Offices and the Labour Court. MAP has supported 2000 Burmese in bringing cases against their employers for paying below minimum wage, or confiscating their registration cards and personal documents. Of these cases 901 have settled favourably with employers made to return documents and pay back the stolen wages.
The MAP Foundation also provides an emergency house for vulnerable migrants and refugees . This is necessary as they often have difficulty accessing health services. The house is in Chang Mai and can have up to 40 people staying there, it provides food, shelter, counseling and activities for people who come there. MAP also liaises with Mae Tao Clinic to take refugees and migrants from Mae Sot who cannot get necessary treatment at the border hospitals. The emergency house sees people with varying conditions, however the most common include people who are HIV-positive, pregnant women, babies with birth defects, children and adults with disabilities, people with heart disease, victims of sexual and physical abuse, and people with mental disorders.
The MAP Foundation also has a strong emphasis on community health and education, and runs three projects that aim to promote the physical, social and emotional well-being of the migrant worker community. These are the Prevention of HIV/AIDS Among Migrant Workers in Thailand, Promotion of Occupational Health and Safety, and Emergency Care projects. In addition, MAP sends out outreach workers to migrant communities to distribute materials and information in the language of the workers (Shan, Karen, Burmese, Lahu), and organises interpreter services with local health services.
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