Anita San Ba holds a grainy Polaroid photo, discoloured with age.

"This is the only family and childhood photo I have," she said.

In the photo she is four, standing alongside her parents and two younger brothers, one a baby in her mother's arms.

"I still remember that day. We had to wait from early morning to midday," Ms San Ba said.

The photographer posed them before a white sheet, wrote the family's United Nations' registration number on the image, as well as some numerals denoting their zone and house number.

The details were essential for locating them in a crowded refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border.

"Soon after my father [left the camp he] went into the forest and never came back," Ms San Ba said.

He is presumed dead, killed in the conflict between government troops and the

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