Rohingya in Thailand

Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol and has no dedicated refugee law. Under the Immigration Act B.E. 2522 (1979), Sections 12 and 54, anyone without valid travel documents is an "illegal alien," subject to mandatory arrest, prosecution, and deportation, with no legal distinction made between a refugee and an undocumented economic migrant. Because Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law renders Rohingya stateless, deportation orders issued against them are frequently impossible to execute, since Myanmar will not accept them as citizens, which locks Rohingya adults into indefinite detention with no resolution either way. [L4,H1]

To address international criticism, Thailand created the National Screening Mechanism, formalized by regulation in December 2019 and launched in September 2023, offering eligible individuals "Protected Person" status. But a letter from the Office of the Council of State to the Cabinet, dated December 18, 2019, explicitly recommended excluding ethnic Rohingya, Uyghurs, and North Koreans from the NSM on national security grounds, before it had even started operating. The mechanism also excludes anyone who has ever held Myanmar migrant worker "pink card" documentation. In its first full year, September 2023 to October 2024, the government granted Protected Person status to just seven people nationwide. UNHCR remains barred from conducting refugee status determination for newly arrived Rohingya inside IDCs or border zones. [L4,H1]

Thailand did codify non-refoulement domestically through the Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act, in force since February 2023, whose Section 13 bars officials from returning anyone to a country where they face torture or enforced disappearance. In practice, this has been repeatedly violated: in April 2024, Royal Thai Army personnel forced several hundred people across the waist-deep Moei River back into active conflict in Karen State; between February 2024 and November 2025, officials coordinated directly with Myanmar junta representatives to force over 3,500 people back through Ranong, where returnees were held in military sports arenas and conscripted; in February 2025, roughly 40 Uyghurs were returned to China from Suan Phlu after a decade in detention; and in February 2026, Fortify Rights documented 14 Rohingya, holding valid UNHCR cards, who reached Thailand after India had deported them to Myanmar, only to face extortion and renewed pushback threats from Thai authorities. [L2,L5,L6]

Inside Immigration Detention Centers, food provisions are minimal: boiled rice with sparse broth or diluted curry, on a budget too small to prevent chronic nutritional deficiency, muscle wasting, and weakened immunity among long-term detainees. Detainees depend on inflated-price canteen purchases or supplementary food from the Thai Red Cross and IOM. [H1]

MSDHS shelters run more systematically, three institutional meals a day, occasionally halal-certified, but residents have no autonomy to cook or source their own food, and cultural dietary preferences are rarely prioritized. [H1]

For the undocumented majority, nutrition tracks daily earnings. Households in low-wage sectors like agriculture, construction, or seafood processing spend most of their income on food, and any disruption, a police crackdown, a slow season, tips the balance into food insecurity. Local Muslim relief networks, mosque committees, and NGOs supplement the gap in Bangkok and border towns like Mae Sot. [H1]

Conditions inside Suan Phlu and Sadao IDCs fall far short of the UN's Nelson Mandela Rules for the treatment of prisoners. Communal concrete cells routinely hold double or triple their intended capacity, floor space so tight that detainees sleep on their sides in rotating shifts, or simply cannot lie flat at all. Cells lack natural light and ventilation, worsening tropical heat, while overflowing latrines, limited drinking water, and inconsistent access to soap or sanitary products drive outbreaks of scabies, respiratory illness, and custodial deaths. [H1]

MSDHS shelters are physically better, private beds, structured meals, clean sanitation, but they are semi-closed institutions: residents cannot leave the grounds, earn income, or integrate locally. [H1]

Outside state custody, undocumented Rohingya in Bangkok or Chiang Mai rent cramped rooms in overcrowded tenements, while coastal workers in Ranong or Songkhla live in wood-and-corrugated-metal shacks inside fishing ports or plantations, without municipal water, reliable electricity, or waste services, and constant exposure to eviction. [H1]

Undocumented Rohingya face routine extortion from police and informal brokers who demand bribes in exchange for not executing arrest warrants under the Immigration Act. In border areas, this has escalated into direct state violence. On January 12, 2024, four Thai Army soldiers from the Ratchamanu Task Force arbitrarily arrested Aung Ko Ko, a 37-year-old Myanmar national working as a volunteer security guard in Mae Sot District, and took him to an abandoned military bunker near Baan Tai village, where they beat him with wooden poles while bystanders' pleas were ignored. He died of his injuries that afternoon. [L1]

A civilian proxy was later arrested and convicted of manslaughter in September 2024. No Thai Army soldier involved in the arrest or beating has been arrested or charged. [L1]

Movement restrictions differ by category but are severe across all of them. IDC detainees are locked in cells around the clock, with only rare courtyard access. Women and children in MSDHS shelters are barred from leaving the grounds without a security escort. Upon apprehension, Thai authorities routinely confiscate mobile phones, family documents, and UNHCR cards, and detainees inside IDCs have no access to phones, the internet, or legal counsel. [H1]

Because adult men are sent to IDCs while women and young children go to MSDHS shelters, often in entirely different provinces, families are separated for years at a time, frequently with no information about whether a detained relative is even still alive. [H1]

Rohingya cannot legally work in Thailand. Unlike migrant workers from Myanmar, Cambodia, or Laos, they are excluded from the formal "pink card" labor registration system entirely, forcing the undocumented population into the informal shadow economy: commercial fishing and seafood processing in Ranong, Songkhla, and Phang Nga; construction in Bangkok and Chiang Mai; and day labor on rubber and palm oil plantations or informal retail in border towns like Mae Sot. [H1]

Without legal status, workers have no leverage. Employers pay well below statutory provincial minimums, withhold wages, demand unpaid overtime, and skip basic safety protections, and because any contact with a labor inspector risks arrest and indefinite detention, Rohingya workers have no way to report abuse, unsafe conditions, or wage theft. [H1]

Thailand's 2005 Cabinet Resolution on Education for All formally guarantees every child, regardless of legal status, the right to enroll in public school. In practice, school administrators frequently refuse Rohingya children over missing birth certificates or language fluency, and undocumented parents often avoid enrollment anyway, fearing that school records could be shared with immigration authorities and trigger a family arrest. Most Rohingya children instead depend on informal learning centers run by civil society, or non-formal activities IOM and UNICEF provide inside MSDHS shelters. [H1]

Healthcare follows the same pattern. Thailand's Universal Health Coverage scheme and its compulsory Migrant Health Insurance both require formal employer registration and valid government ID, excluding undocumented Rohingya outright. Emergency care is available at public hospitals, but patients risk out-of-pocket costs and staff reporting their status to immigration police. Basic care for those in detention or shelters comes mainly from IOM medical teams and humanitarian NGOs. [H1]

Successive Thai governments, military and civilian alike, frame the Rohingya presence through a national security and counter-trafficking lens, fearing that open camps or formal recognition would create a regional "pull factor" turning Thailand into a permanent destination. The Royal Thai Navy's "help-on" policy reflects this directly: naval vessels intercept boats approaching the coast, supply fuel, food, water, and basic medical aid, then direct or push the vessel onward toward Malaysia or Indonesia. Any boat that actually lands on Thai soil is seized and its passengers arrested. [H1]

Human Rights Watch, Fortify Rights, Amnesty International, and the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network condemn the reliance on indefinite detention, boat pushbacks, and forced returns as violations of customary international law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Thailand's own domestic Anti-Torture Act. They call for removing the NSM's exclusions, granting UNHCR unrestricted access, legal work rights, and Alternatives to Detention for vulnerable groups. [L2,L4]

Thailand's 2025 to 2028 term on the UN Human Rights Council has sharpened international scrutiny. The government points to the NSM and the Anti-Torture Act as evidence of reform, but operational reality, seven people protected in the NSM's first year, thousands still pushed back, shows security priorities still override protection obligations. Basic data, how many Rohingya actually live undocumented in the country, what happens to people who vanish from MSDHS shelters, remains unverified and effectively unmonitored. [H1]