When Neighbours Are Also Evacuating: Why Armed-Conflict Displacement Breaks the Disaster-Management Model of Thai Local Administrative Organizations

Abstract

The Thailand-Cambodia border conflict of 2025 displaced civilians on a scale without precedent in the relationship between the two countries. In the July escalation alone Thai authorities reported that more than 131,000 people had left their border villages within days, and the renewed hostilities of November and December produced displacement measured in the hundreds of thousands before a ceasefire took effect on 27 December 2025. Thai scholarship on the role of local administrative organizations in these events has tended to praise their proximity to citizens and their budgetary flexibility. This academic article argues that such praise, while accurate, obscures a structural mismatch. Thailand manages armed-conflict displacement through the same legal and operational instrument it uses for natural disaster, namely the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Act B.E. 2550, yet the two phenomena differ in four respects that matter for administration: the trigger lies wholly outside local jurisdiction, so the preparedness phase cannot reduce risk; displacement is simultaneous across an entire border region, so the mutual-aid assumption embedded in disaster law fails precisely when it is needed; the duration is determined politically rather than physically, so shelters designed for days remain open for months; and operational command shifts toward security agencies once martial law is declared. Drawing on documentary analysis of Thai law, national plans, international humanitarian reporting and recent governance literature, the article proposes the RAP model, comprising regional pre-positioning, authority clarity and protracted-displacement planning, as a framework for reform.