Thousands of stateless children to get temporary ID cards : Will get right to study, travel

Thousands of stateless children to get temporary ID cards : Will get right to study, travel.

By Anchalee Kongrut & Theerawat Khamthita

Thousands of stateless children at schools in Chiang Rai are to receive temporary identity cards _ a vital document that can be used to prove their Thai citizenship, a member of the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) said. Tuenjai Deetes said the students in Chiang Rai have been chosen for a pilot project aimed at granting 13-digit ID cards to about 33,000 stateless students across the country as a gift on the occasion of Children's Day.

The presentation will take place next month.

The project is part of a plan by the Interior Ministry to give away 200,000 identification cards to stateless people _ most of them ethnic minorities living along the Thai-Burmese border.

According to Ms Tuenjai, students with the temporary ID cards will be entitled to education in Thailand and will be given permission to travel to study at education outlets in other provinces for up to six years.

Currently, they are required to ask for travel permission that needs to be renewed every six months. Some have to travel long distances from school back to their village every six months just to renew their consent.

Ms Tuenjai, chairman of the NLA's committee on solving the problem of stateless people living in Thailand, said the panel will submit a plan to procure a fingerprint recognition scanner to verify the identity of recipients of the ID cards.

Interior Ministry officials have called on the government to issue guidelines for dealing with the issue, she added.

She said officials will be sent to survey and register the birth of every child born in Thailand, Thai or alien, to prevent any ambiguity concerning their status.

In addition, she urged the government to allow communities to have a role in verifying stateless people. ''Thailand has become a centre of illegal migration. There are at least three million non-Thais,'' she said.

''Some are illegal labourers who sneaked across the border to work. But others are ethnic minorities left out from the ministry's civil registration that have difficulties in proving their identity.''

She said the ministry should encourage villages under the project to set up committees to help the state verify the background of stateless people. Without that help, illegal labourers and human traffickers would exploit the loopholes, she said.

''This is not a leeway to give Thai nationality to any stateless person. But it is a way to give basic welfare to children of ethnic groups _ those who were born here but were not registered on the ministry's civil database,'' she said.

Amporn Prasit, an official at the ministry's Civil Registration Division, confirmed a survey was underway to classify stateless people before the 13-digit temporary ID cards were handed over.

The project, to be carried out between March and June, follows a cabinet resolution issued on Jan 18, 2005 by the then Thaksin Shinawatra government that instructed the Interior Ministry to give ID cards to stateless people who can prove they were born of Thai parents or had stayed in Thailand over a certain period of time.

Bangkok Post
Sunday January 14, 2007