South East Asia

2015 year-end information on the South-East Asia subregion is presented below. A summary of this can also be downloaded in PDF format. This subregion covers the following countries:

Subregion: South East Asia

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Latest update of camps and office locations 13 Jan 2016. By clicking on the icons on the map, additional information is displayed.

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Budgets and Expenditure in Subregion South East Asia

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2015 {"categories":[2012,2013,2014,2015],"budget":[109.712189803,170.05225616,159.04005036,169.348267493],"expenditure":[65.27725499,86.67864779,70.15169772,59.54246395]} {"categories":[2012,2013,2014,2015],"p1":[65.887160493,86.93198302,84.64840292,114.014204274],"p2":[12.66262066,15.84872147,16.99425914,20.40722544],"p3":[0.45499998,null,null,null],"p4":[30.70740867,67.27155167,57.3973883,34.926837779]} {"categories":[2012,2013,2014,2015],"p1":[38.19299924,39.40045105,38.35734844,43.66420899],"p2":[7.65746913,7.40528991,7.95518218,6.57623988],"p3":[0.37040893,null,null,null],"p4":[19.05637769,39.87290683,23.8391671,9.30201508]}

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People of Concern - 2015

[["Refugees",187435],["Refugee-like situation",253252],["Asylum-seekers",76515],["IDPs",479263],["IDP-like situation",35000],["Returned IDPs",280113],["Returned refugees",3],["Stateless",1432213],["Others of concern",80710]]

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Plan Overview
Year-End Report

Response in 2015

There were five main populations of concern to UNHCR in South-East Asia in 2015: Rohingya refugees; non-Rohingya refugees from Myanmar; out-of-region refugees; stateless people; and internally displaced people (IDPs).

Most countries in South-East Asia have not acceded to the 1951 Refugee Convention; however UNHCR continued to advocate for an expanded protection space, with a focus on temporary stay arrangements, registration in cooperation with the host governments when conditions allowed, promoting alternatives to detention, improving access to refugee status determination (RSD) procedures and securing durable solutions. The Office also advocated for the inclusion of refugees and asylum-seekers in existing labour migration and regularization schemes.

In close coordination with the (IOM) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), UNHCR continued to work closely with governments in the South-East Asia subregion in response to unsafe mixed movements originating from the Bay of Bengal. Following a widely reported emergency in which some 5,000 refugees and migrants were abandoned in the Andaman Sea by smugglers in May 2015, regional meetings were held in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia in the second half of 2015. Common priorities emerging from this series of meetings included saving lives, combating people smuggling and trafficking, expanding legal pathways for migration, and addressing the root causes of such movements.

UNHCR continued to deepen its engagement with key regional institutions, notably with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and related Transnational Crime (Bali Process), and the Regional Support Office of the Bali Process.

The Regional Maritime Movements Monitoring Unit (R3MU), established in mid-2014, monitored and analysed trends in maritime movements, primarily for Rohingya refugees, to help inform UNHCR and its partners’ responses.

The Office maintained a strong focus on resolving and preventing statelessness, with notable developments in almost every operation in South-East Asia. UNHCR has taken a leading role in the promotion of birth registration, in line with the ground-breaking Asia-Pacific ministerial declaration on universal civil registration and vital statistics in November 2014.

Operations

Operations in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand are presented in separate country pages.

In the Philippines, the emergency transit mechanism continued to provide immediate protection for refugees waiting to be resettled. UNHCR also continued to lead and coordinate the protection cluster, in line with the UN’s joint response framework on conflict-based internal displacement in Mindanao. By year end, UNHCR registered over 7,100 individuals of Indonesian descent residing in Mindanao, as part of a gradual effort to clarify their status in accordance with the national laws of Indonesia and the Philippines.

UNHCR’s Regional Office in Bangkok had direct oversight over the Office’s operations in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mongolia, Singapore, Timor-Leste and Viet Nam.

In Cambodia, UNHCR continued to advocate for access to registration and RSD procedures for some 200 individuals from the Central Highlands in Viet Nam and provided assistance to those who opted to return to their areas of origin.

UNHCR’s collaboration with the Government of Viet Nam played a significant role in strengthening the Office’s engagement with key regional interlocutors, such as ASEAN and civil society organizations. This included facilitating regional peer-to-peer learning and information-sharing opportunities between states on good practices to reduce and prevent statelessness, and supporting the new civil society regional statelessness network formed in 2015 by facilitating a follow-up retreat, and collaborating on other regional activities.

A small number of asylum-seekers were reported in Mongolia, Singapore and Timor-Leste. UNHCR conducted RSD and provided limited financial assistance when appropriate.

Summary (ENG)

Operational Environment and Strategy

Available protection space for refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless people in the region is fragile and unpredictable, due to a lack of national legal frameworks in most South-East Asian countries. Furthermore, some States have introduced increasingly restrictive policies - such as denying safe disembarkation or access at the airport, and narrowing protection space and access to asylum. There is also an increase in maritime “push backs” and instances of refoulement.

Only three States are parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention and only one State has signed the 1954 Statelessness Convention. The lack of asylum laws and diversity of national legal frameworks, as well as government practices and protection environments in the region’s countries, make achieving regional harmonization challenging.

A major component of UNHCR’s work remains to increase the protection space for all groups of concern and to advocate with States in South-East Asia to establish effective legal frameworks governing the protection of refugees and stateless populations. A significant number of refugees and asylum-seekers in the region reside in urban settings, and some States without national asylum systems consider them to be illegal migrants, thereby subjecting them to detention, expulsion, refoulement, and other serious protection risks. The lack of legal status also prevents people of concern from accessing the labour market and basic services, including health care and education.

The irregular movements of people of concern in the region pose grave dangers to those who undertake them, with an increase in maritime movements and a loss of life at sea. They also present serious challenges in balancing governments’ international obligations to provide fair access to protection and asylum to those in need, with the need to combat people-smuggling and human-trafficking networks, and the legitimate interest of States to maintain control of national borders.

Where the necessary conditions are in place, comprehensive solutions and approaches will be pursued, including local integration, voluntary repatriation, resettlement, labour options and temporary stay arrangements.

UNHCR in South-East Asia will focus on establishing protection-sensitive responses to mixed migration, registration and documentation. It will support access to asylum and refugee status determination (RSD), and promote alternatives to detention. Additionally, the Office will continue to implement strategies aimed at improving the protection and durable solution prospects for urban refugees, including targeted assistance to the most vulnerable urban refugees and prevent refoulement.

Response and Implementation

Operations in Myanmar and Thailand are presented in separate country chapters. For other countries where UNHCR operates in the sub-region, please see below.

In early 2014, the Government of Bangladesh announced its national strategy for Myanmar refugees and undocumented Myanmar nationals, acknowledging their need for basic humanitarian relief. UNHCR hopes that this will enable unregistered refugees to access international protection. Meanwhile, UNHCR provides protection and life-sustaining assistance to refugees residing in the two official camps, pending the identification of durable solutions.

In Indonesia, UNHCR continues to provide mandate protection to refugees and asylum-seekers in a number of urban locations through registration, RSD, documentation and processing for resettlement and repatriation, where possible. The detention of refugees and asylum-seekers and the widespread location of people of concern remain key protection challenges in Indonesia, particularly for a growing number of children and detainees with specific needs.

In Mongolia, UNHCR will continue to conduct refugee status determination while advocating for the Government to establish asylum procedures and to promote further measures to address statelessness including potential accession to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, and to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Malaysia is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and lacks a legislative and administrative framework to address refugee matters. As all asylum-seekers and refugees are treated as irregular migrants, and in the absence of any substantive engagement by the authorities, UNHCR remains the principal actor in providing international protection. UNHCR will continue to address the issue of statelessness, including by identifying and reducing the number of people with undetermined nationality at risk of statelessness.

The Emergency Transit Mechanism for resettlement processing will continue in the Philippines. Efforts to strengthen the national protection regime, in collaboration with government agencies and humanitarian partners, will continue. A complementary protection framework for people falling outside the Refugee Convention definition will be pursued. In the southern Philippines, UNHCR will co-lead the of protection cluster with the Government’s Department of Social Welfare and Development, to coordinate a response to the internal displacement situation.

The organization promotes the civil registration of all people of concern, and is active in improving civil registration and vital statistics in Asia and the Pacific. The Regional Office is pursuing better refugee protection in Cambodia and Timor-Leste by supporting asylum procedures and capacity building, as well as working with the Government of Viet Nam to resolve the nationality status of the remaining populations of concern under UNHCR’s statelessness mandate.

Summary (ENG) or Résumé (FR)

Budget and Expenditure
Voluntary Contributions

2015 Budget and Expenditure in South East Asia | USD

Operation		Pillar 1 Refugee programme	Pillar 2 Stateless programme	Pillar 4 IDP projects	Total
Bangladesh	Budget Expenditure	15,175,575 7,569,132	8,731 7,651	0 0	15,184,305 7,576,783
Indonesia	Budget Expenditure	8,430,233 4,107,127	89,942 61,184	0 0	8,520,175 4,168,311
Malaysia	Budget Expenditure	17,462,795 8,409,193	1,237,815 813,173	0 0	18,700,610 9,222,366
Myanmar	Budget Expenditure	25,313,692 5,557,635	15,998,084 3,864,469	31,460,944 8,193,585	72,772,720 17,615,690
Philippines	Budget Expenditure	934,787 687,007	1,077,090 858,615	3,465,894 1,108,430	5,477,770 2,654,052
Thailand	Budget Expenditure	37,165,542 13,515,991	1,197,917 517,851	0 0	38,363,459 14,033,842
Thailand Regional Office	Budget Expenditure	9,531,580 3,818,123	797,647 453,297	0 0	10,329,227 4,271,420
Total	Budget Expenditure	114,014,204 43,664,209	20,407,225 6,576,240	34,926,838 9,302,015	169,348,267 59,542,464