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Limbo Nr. 4

 

Summer 2012. This is Camp Number Four, a Kachin refugee camp in Laying, tiny town along the border between the Chinese Province of Yunnan and THE Kachin State of Myanmar.
Camp Nr. 4 inhabitants - mainly women, kids and elders escaping from war - are not sick and do not suffer from hunger. But their condition is undoubtedly miserable, liminal and extremely precarious.

Mainland China's refugee camps are never declared to the United Nations. Therefore, even if the local governments organize help chains for these persons, the unofficial status of these groups of people casts them away from the civil society.

They perpetually live in a legal limbo, where there is no protection by UNHCR. And they have no right to claim their refugee status, nor the chance to claim the principle of non-refoulement, when in trouble. Hence, they easily end up trapped in the net of every kind of illegal activity between the borders, such as sexual slavery, drug trafficking, brides and slaves market, etc.

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