"IT’S BEEN a tough four months since U Saw Lawi, 54, and his family returned to Myanmar after spending nine years as refugees in Thailand. Saw Lawi, a Lisu, had been living in the Umpiem refugee camp south of the Thai border town of Mae Sot since 2009. In 2009, he was struggling to make a living polishing gems at Mogok, the Mandalay Region town famed for its rubies and sapphires, when his wife became ill. He couldn’t afford the treatment so he contacted his son, who was working in Mae Sot, and asked him to send money. The young man instead advised that they travel to Mae Sot, opposite Myanmar’s Myawaddy, so his mother could be treated for free at the Mae Tao Clinic, which was founded in 1988 by Dr Cynthia Maung, who has won many international awards for her humanitarianism. They arrived in Mae Sot later that year. After his wife recovered, they went to live at Umpiem, one of nine camps along the border with Thailand that were housing 93,534 mainly Karen refugees on July 31, show figures from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. Umpiem was home to 10,793 refugees. Life in the camps has become increasingly difficult in recent years because of a decline in donor funding. Almost 10 years after they left Myanmar, Saw Lawi and his family decided to return under a voluntary repatriation programme launched by Myanmar and Thailand in cooperation with UNHCR. They were among 575 people who returned to Myanmar from the camps in Thailand in February; more than 1,000 have returned in four batches since the programme began three years ago, according to Myanmar government figures..."