Overshadowed and underfunded: How the US-Iran War is Accelerating the Erasure of Myanmar Political Refugees in Thailand

In Mae La refugee camp on Thailand’s mountainous border with Myanmar, a man named Mahn fell from a roof and suffered a serious head injury. In normal times, the camp hospital would have treated him for free. But the hospital had just shut its doors overnight, its longstanding American funding cut by President Trump’s executive order. Mahn had nowhere to go (Alternatives Humanitaires, 2025). His story is not an outlier. Across nine border camps in Thailand, over 108,000 Myanmar refugees have watched hospitals close, food rations disappear, and resettlement flights get canceled one by one. This slow unraveling rarely receives the international attention it desperately needs. Yet another distant war has now seized what little remained of the world’s focus and resources.

When the United States and Israel launched military strikes against Iran in February 2026, the world’s attention snapped instantly toward the Middle East. Television screens filled with missile strikes and diplomatic summits. But in nine border camps along the Thailand-Myanmar frontier, the catastrophe that was already unfolding became even harder to see. (APHR, 2025). 

This is a story about the world allowing vital mechanisms for these refugees’ survival to collapse one by one while looking elsewhere.

The collapse began before the war. When the Trump administration gutted USAID in early 2025, US humanitarian spending fell from $14 billion to $4 billion almost overnight (Vigersky, Council on Foreign Relations, 2026). Camp hospitals are closed. Resettlement flights were canceled. One pregnant woman, stripped of her health coverage, crossed illegally back into Myanmar just to give birth (Alternatives Humanitaires, 2025). By July 31, 2025, The Border Consortium and the International Rescue Committee suspended food aid for over 80 percent of camp families. The monthly food allowance for one adult had already been slashed to 77 baht, roughly $2.30. “The cash decreased and prices went up,” one refugee said, “You can’t buy anything with that.” (Human Rights Watch, 2025)

Just about a year later, the US-Iran war arrived and accelerated the damage in ways that are specific and measurable. The war pushed oil prices higher, raising the cost of delivering whatever aid still remains. It introduced shipping delays that slow humanitarian supply chains across Asia (Refugees International, 2026). Most directly, the United States has spent an estimated $37 billion in the first months of the Iran war, while billions in State Department humanitarian funds sit unspent and unallocated (Vigersky, Council on Foreign Relations, 2026). That spending has made it politically harder for the US to restore humanitarian budgets. European donors already cutting their own aid, now point to a louder and more urgent emergency as justification for staying the course. It is not to say that attention for Myanmar’s refugees has been stolen by the US Iran War, which is one of the most consequential events of the decades globally in its own right. What really happened was it further deteriorated any existing prospects of restoring vital support mechanisms that the refugees desperately needed. 

Some will argue that even without the Iran war, these refugees would still be in serious trouble, and that is true. The USAID collapse alone had already ended food aid, closed hospitals, and shut the resettlement program. Thailand still does not recognize them as legal refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention, classifying them instead as illegal migrants. (Michigan Journal of International Law, 2024) Without the Iran war, 108,000 people would still be living in camps with no food, no doctors, and no clear future. The crisis was already severe. But without the war, the possibility of reversing some of that damage was still alive. Advocacy could have pressured donors. Journalists in Chiang Mai, already losing their own funding, could have kept the story moving. (Nieman Reports, 2026) The US-Iran war has made that already diminished possibility significantly harder to reach. 

The people trapped inside this narrowing space have almost no options left. They cannot return to Myanmar, where the military has killed at least 6,231 civilians since the 2021 coup and still bombs civilian areas. (OHCHR, 2025). They have carried UN refugee cards for years, even decades, but those cards open no doors in Thailand. “Having the card means we can’t go anywhere, we can’t apply for jobs, we can’t study,” said a teacher who has spent 17 years in Mae La camp (Human Rights Watch, 2025). Thailand recently allowed some camp refugees to work legally for the first time, but only because a domestic labor shortage left the government with no other choice (Devex, 2026). While the success of such a policy should be closely observed, one should bear in mind that it was a labour policy in nature, not a support mechanism that put the refugees, their integration and needs at the center. 

There is still time to act. Donor governments can restore funding to border programs without waiting for the Iran war to end. They can treat Myanmar’s camps not as a lower-priority emergency but as a long-running commitment that predates the current crisis. Thailand can expand and improve the implementation of the work permit policy for camp refugees and ensure it reaches the most vulnerable. None of this requires solving the Iran war first. 

Mahn fell from a roof, and there was no hospital to treat him. That was already true before a single missile was fired at Iran. The war did not create this catastrophe. But it has made certain that fewer people are watching, fewer budgets are available, and fewer political conversations are possible.There are still 108,000 people in those camps. It is not too late to make different choices.

About the author

Ye Linn Naing is a Human rights professional with experience in resource mobilization, and advocacy-oriented research, specializing in Myanmar/Burma. He is committed to the Burma democracy movement and experienced working in cross-cultural, security-sensitive environments