Beginning in 2010, Japan will inaugurate a three-year pilot program to accept 30 refugees a year from camps nestled along the remote border between Thailand and Burma.
This is a so-called third-country resettlement program for displaced people living in foreign refugee camps who have no chance or desire for repatriation to their home country.
Japan is the first Asian country to accept "resettlement refugees" in a region that produces many, and there are high hopes that the program will expand to the point where it can make a meaningful difference. The stakes are therefore high for the success of this pilot program.