Ethical Dilemmas and Identifications of Faith-Based Humanitarian Organizations in the Karen Refugee Crisis

This paper examines faith-based humanitarian organizations and their multiple alliances with Karen Baptist missionary networks in the context of the Karen refugee crisis. Far from being only passive recipients of humanitarian assistance, I argue that Karen people become important agents of proselytizing, using their cultural capital to reach out to the imagined community of would-be Christians. Doing so, Karen are able to expand opportunities and to link their own self and livelihood to the mission of the Christian movement. Stabilized and supported by international humanitarian aid, the Karen National Union (KNU) resistance movement exercises a form of governance in the refugee camps by controlling their internal organization in contestation with the Thai state authorities. This biased engagement places humanitarian organizations and the Baptist church in opposition to the Burmese government and thus leaves faith-based humanitarian organizations with the ethical dilemma of whether to abandon impartiality. The article makes use of Castells' social network concept to illustrate the importance of material and non-material resources that make access to indigenous refugee networks and international humanitarian aid organizations viable for survival and reproduction in a hostile environment.