To answer this question, let’s first review the definition of Refugee and the figures of The United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
What is a Refugee?
According to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees from Geneva on July 28, and signed by 127 nations, a refugee is someone who has left his or her country because of a "well-founded fear" of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion1.
The UNHCR was set up in 1951 to assist the estimated 1 million people that were still displaced after World War II to return home. Since that time, this UN agency has helped find lasting solutions for tens of millions of refugees worldwide. By the beginning of 2011, the UNCHR reported a total of 10.4 million refugees in need of assistance, without including the non-registered refugees and the ones that are the concern of other agencies and international organizations.
More than half of the UNHCR’s refugees of concern are in Asia and some 20 percent in Africa. The living conditions of that total of refugees varies from well-established camps and collective centers to makeshift shelters or living in the open, depending on the years of existence of the camps, the support received by governments that give shelter to those refugees, and the empowerment of the refugee community as well as the conflict situation. In the exhibit number 1, it is possible to appreciate a map which gives us a picture of the locations and the amount of refugees per region which are the concern of the UNHCR for those refugees that live in urban areas, which are more than half of all refugees of concern to UNHCR, there are three possible solutions to their situation:
repatriation; local integration or resettlement.
1 Official web portal of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 1951 United Nation Convention of Geneva relating to the status of Refugees. Retrieved by March, 2011, from National Chengchi University:
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1.2. Why do we need to create jobs for Burmese refugees?
Because local integration is the most viable solution to their suffering since repatriation is not possible for Burmese refugees due to the fact that Burma is still in the midst of an internal armed conflict between the Burmese government and the various ethnic groups in the country which has been going on since April 1948 . Also because the third solution, resettlement, is only possible for a small number of registered refugees. Most of the efforts of NGOs to support them have been oriented on local integration, and that is exactly what is intended with this business plan.
The idea of creating this social and humanitarian impact partnership came after Emmanuel Escoto, the writer and consultant of the present business plan who served as volunteer in Mae La in the Summer of 2010, proposed to Digital Divide Data (DDD), the expansion of the social impact that DDD has created in part of Asia to a humanitarian level by benefiting Burmese Refugees. He expressed that he could imagine a life living on 5 kg of rice, 300 grams of fermented fish, charcoal, and one liter of oil for a month, and then repeats this month after month. That is what each
registered refugee in a camp receives as their monthly ration.
The refugees living in Mae La camp are mostly Karen people, an ethnic group who have fled their homes in Burma, persecuted by their government, brutalized by soldiers, and now living in that refugee camp. There are an estimated 141,076 refugees living in nine camps along the Thailand-Burma border, including about 57,915 refugees that are unregistered and are people that have entered the camps since the last official registration in 2004/5. This number does not include students, the Internally Displaced People, and the more than 10,000 refugees that could not get permanent asylum since November 2010 when new hostilities where persecuted a as result of the General Elections in Burma which has done nothing to weaken the military over the country2.
Exhibit 2 presents some newspapers clippings showing the suffering faces of the people that needed protections during those hostilities of November 2010. Most of them were once farmers who
planted rice, vegetables, or raised pigs, chicken and fish. Having had their homes burnt to the ground or family members killed, raped, or taken away as child soldiers and slaves, they have fled their homeland and now live in these camps. They may be safe from the sudden attacks of the Burmese army, but the conditions in the camps are harsh.
2 Official web portal of Thailand Burma Border Consortium. 2010 TBBC Program Six Month Report from July to December. Retrieved by March, 2011, from National Chengchi University:
http://www.tbbc.org/resources/resources.htm#reports
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Camps are overcrowded, and the numbers of people are increasing daily. Frustration runs high with so many people together who are not allowed to go out of the camp or work legally. Most of them feel they have no future and dream, which is the major frustration since they have almost lost their hope to make their dreams come true.
According to the Women Refugee Commission, which is an NGO that advocates for laws, policies and programs to improve the lives and protect the rights of refugees: “With few opportunities to continue their studies or to put into practice what they have learned, refugee youths are becoming increasingly frustrated and despondent about their futures”.
One community leader said, “When people can’t see their futures, you see an increase in social problems, like domestic violence and abuse.” The Women's Commission also heard reports that alcohol abuse among youth is high. Many young people have spent their entire lives within the confines of a camp and are completely dependent on external assistance. Others work illegally outside of the camps, exposing themselves to abuses and deportation. Others have waited patiently for a number of years to be resettled to a third country, but face tremendous uncertainty and anxiety about what awaits them and whether or not they will be allowed to leave3.
Exhibit 3 presents the result of a survey made by the Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Environmental Health, Emergency and Environmental health services from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Those results are a list of the number of frustrations that the Karenni population listed as mentioned as their sufferings.
1.3. Why Mae La Camp?
Simply because the conditions for a successful business are given:
Once they were civilians whose rights of freedom, peace and progress were adversely affected by a conflict which has generated huge concern from the United States government and companies, which is beneficial because most of the DDD’s customers are located in US.
3 Official web portal, Women Refugees Commission, Living in Limbo: Burma’s youth in Thailand see few
opportunities to use education and vocational skills. Fields Mission to Thailand May 2008 Report. Retrieved by March,
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Burmese camps have been visited by: George and Laura Bush, John McCain and Angelina Jolie, which has contributed to a rise in international awareness about the situation.
Mae La Camp is located near an urban area in Thailand with access to all public services including: highways, electricity, and internet connectivity.
Karen refugees already possess computing and English skills as well as high school diploma granted by the Karen Education Department.
Thailand shares borders with Laos and Cambodia, which will make easy for DDD managers to visit Refugees’ Dreams operation offices.
After 35 years of existence, Mae La camp is well organized and developing compared with other camps in Thailand and worldwide
1.4. Why DDD would decide to start operations in Refugee Camps instead of continuing to increase expansion in developing countries such as
Cambodia, Laos and Kenya?
Because:
People living in refugee camps such as the refugees living in Mae La Camp
People living in developing country such as Cambodia, Laos and Kenya
Were forced to leave their home countries because of a well-founded fear of political, religious or ethnic persecution.
They live in their home countries in peace and under social and economic
development. Their ideologies, religion and ethnicity are respected.
Their own government is usually the one displacing them and seeing them more or less as part of the enemy.
Their governments protect them and see them as their friends and people to work for.
Have no freedom, human rights protection or variety of opportunities.
Have freedom, human rights protection and variety of opportunities.
No access to jobs, decent income and no opportunities for economic growth.
They have access to different kind of jobs, incomes, and opportunities to grow
economically.
They are dependent. Humanitarian
organizations provide them with rations of food, shelter, health and education in small quantities and variety, usually the same
They are independent. They are their own providers and are supported by their governments, developing agencies, and companies to access to food, shelter, health
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food month after month, year after year. and education in the quantity or variety they can afford.
They have almost no hope and think that their situation will not change.
They have more hope and think that their situation can change.
Frustration of living only in a closed area within 4km2 of territory with no freedom of movement to other areas or countries.
Living in open and vast territories with freedom of movement to other areas or countries.
Because they cannot see their futures, there is an increase in social problems, like domestic violence and abuse. Alcohol abuse among youth is high.
They can see their future and if there are social problems they are due to other reasons, not because of the frustrations of being isolated.
Constant fear of the military of their governments or the military of the asylum giver government.
No fear founded on military harassment at all.
Or simply because the impact they will cause is greater in the camp than in those developing countries, and the higher the impact, the more donors and customers would choose Digital Divide Data. This higher impact is added to by lower start-up costs. To start operations in Kenya for example, DDD needed more than 500,000 USD to benefit 300 employees with their current model of offering employment and training. To start operations in the camp, they will need to invest a little more than 100,000 USD and will directly impact the life of 2186 refugees.
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Data Entry Refugees Dreams Business Process Outsourcing Tripartite Partnership, will be the first refugees’ company that focuses on the Data Entry Services founded with the idea that the world's poorest refugees can produce their own solutions to poverty and aid dependence in the new global economy by accessing the knowledge, skills, and opportunities that power economic growth and lasting change around the world, and which is Information Technology.
Data Entry Refugees Dreams will sign a long-term tripartite partnership agreement with Digital Divide Data (DDD) and the Thai-Burma Border Consortium (TBBC). DDD is a multiple award winning leader in social enterprise that provides disadvantaged youth in Cambodia, Laos and in Kenya with the education and training they need to deliver world-class, competitively priced IT services to global clients and break the cycle of poverty. This not-for-profit provides data entry, digitization and other IT outsourcing services to clients worldwide, including Reader's Digest, Harvard Business School, New York Daily News, Kaplan Test Prep and others.
TBBC is a consortium of 12 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from ten
countries, providing food, shelter and non- food items to refugees and displaced people from Burma.
They will provide the partnership with not only the local administrative and management support, but also the legal rights to operate from the camp, because TBBC is the only NGO that can establish operations in the camp since it has the right from the authorities of Thailand to create jobs and improve the life of the refugees.
Refugees Dreams will be a social and humanitarian organization that functions with a durable business model and approach to the development of the Refugee Community. It will focus on viable business growth that will directly benefit more than 11,350 refugee families in the first five years of operations and up to 22,700 refugees indirectly. When the market necessity for projects that do not need to be executed internally in companies is conjugated with the Internet as a link to these remote locations, we have a new business model.
Refugees Dreams will make profits to build dreams since all the funding and revenues obtained by the services offered will go directly to the budget of dreams realizations. This will be a special fund