Even though the move by Thailand is a step in the right direction, it is but a small drop in the ocean of stateless people living in the country today. It is estimated there are over 443,862 stateless people in Thailand, based on the latest data from the Thai government.
But data from an organization called The Thailand Project suggests there are 2 to 3.5 million stateless people living in Thailand, mainly in the northern region. Targets of human traffickers, they have no rights, no access to education, health care, and no hope.
Strangely enough, tens of thousands of the stateless belong to hill tribes living in remote fringe regions of the country. They have little access to outside information about their rights and the nationality procedures to follow. They are ethnically different from the majority of Thais. Many more are stateless because they are illegal immigrants who fled from Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.
“Without nationality, many say they cannot enjoy their human rights in full including the right to move freely and to own property. They often have poor access to basic services like affordable healthcare and higher education,” UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler told a news briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
Thailand did revise its nationality law in 2008 in the hope of tackling statelessness, but the governmental bureaucracy involved in getting legal status is daunting, and most stateless people without an education or information on the changes in the law are more often than not, left out in the cold.
Voice of America, speaking by phone with Fongchan Suksaneh, a legal adviser to stateless people in Bangkok, reports she said, “The biggest difficulty I come across is corruption and officials themselves not being familiar with the law, and not wanting to be familiar with the law.”
“When you come up against that mindset, that makes me pessimistic that they’ll be able to accelerate [progress] and that they’re going to meet the deadline,” she added. It is hoped the meaningful beginning by Thailand to rectify the stateless situation in the country will continue.