By Celina Su

In 2000, I began to work with a small, community-based project called the Burmese Refugee Project (BRP) in northwest Thailand. Using a participatory model of community development, the BRP helps over 100 Burmese Shan refugees in northwest Thailand access education, health, and legal services. Through this work, I learned that refugees are the victims of what public health researchers call structural violence--physical and mental harm that results from unjust social, economic, and political structures. Many of the prescriptions that would treat these ailments--such as a shared wheelbarrow so that the refugees do not have to carry 50-kilo bags of rice on their shoulders, and for the man above, sunglasses to treat pterygium (a scar on the eyes caused by sun damage)--fall outside typical medical practice.