Sa Kaeo Refugee Camp

Sa Kaeo Refugee Camp (also referred to as Sa Kaeo I or Ban Kaeng) was the first organized refugee relief camp established on the Thai-Cambodian border by the Royal Thai Government with support from international relief agencies including the United Nations. It was opened in October 1979 and closed in early July 1980. At its peak the population exceeded 30,000 refugees but no formal census was ever conducted.

Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea in December 1978 and by early 1979 thousands of Cambodians had crossed the Thai-Cambodian border seeking safety and food. By May 1979 large numbers of refugees had set up improvised camps at Kampot, Mairut, Lumpuk, Khao Larn and Ban Thai Samart, near Aranyaprathet. Then on 10 October, 60,000 Khmer Rouge soldiers and civilians under their control arrived at Khlong Wa and, shortly thereafter, Khlong Gai Thuen. These refugees were in advanced stages of exhaustion and malnutrition, and the need for organized living arrangements was obvious.

On October 22, 1979 Colonel Sanan Kajornklam of the Thai Supreme Command telephoned Martin Barber of UNHCR to inform him that the Thai military would transport Cambodians at the border from areas south of Aranyaprathet to a location outside of the Thai town of Sa Kaeo, about 40 miles inside the border. UNHCR was invited to establish a holding center there that would house up to 90,000 refugees. UNHCR sent one of its newest recruits, British journalist Mark Malloch Brown, together with his Thai assistant Kadisis Rochanakorn, to survey the site, a 160,000-square-meter uninhabited area used for rice cultivation. The Thai government requested UNHCR to make immediate emergency preparations for the Cambodians. Brown contracted a bulldozer and started carving roads in the mud. A backhoe was hired to dig latrines. Water tanks were donated by Christian and Missionary Alliance (CAMA), which also donated 100,000 pieces of bamboo and thatch to construct a hospital, built hastily by 200 Thai workers Brown contracted at $2 a day. A crude warehouse was built. Catholic Relief Services donated plastic rope, straw mats and baby bottles. With less than one day's advance notice, UNHCR and other volunteer agencies hastily tried to construct basic camp infrastructure as thousands of severely malnourished Cambodians arrived. Several hundred unaccompanied children were in these first groups of refugees.

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