Thai border turf war severely impacting village families
Yesterday's announcement about our amazing Cambodia projects matching funding target attainment has been tempered overnight with news that the lives of a significant number of our already struggling Oddar Meanchey families have been thrown into chaos due to a border skirmish between the Cambodian and Thai governments.
Relations between the two countries have been deteriorating over recent months, but tensions spilled over late last month when a Cambodian soldier was shot and killed near the border.
Oddar Meanchey, where much of our project activity is centred and one of our primary schools operates, backs on to the Thai border and our village families have relied on employment in Thailand for decades as jobs are non-existent in OM.
As well as closing the borders, Thai officials have also started deporting all Cambodian workers, much to the frustration of local companies who rely on this workforce to keep their businesses running.
The fall out from all of this is that hundreds of OM families are now facing a dire situation where they have no income and therefore no means of putting food on the table. This will impact almost all of the 550 students who attend our primary school so the situation is very close to home for our projects.
The last time there was a hard border closure and deportation of Cambodian workers from Thailand was during the height of the Covid pandemic and we witnessed some harrowing situations of deprivation and near starvation. We rolled out an emergency food aid program that was the only lifeline for this forgotten corner of Cambodia.
Our in-country director Pastor Abe is monitoring the situation closely and we are hopeful we may be able to extend our resources and implement another food program in the coming months. I'll keep you posted.
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