News comment: Thailand takes major step towards ending statelessness

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News comment: Thailand takes major step towards ending statelessness

This statement is attributable to Ms. Hai Kyung Jun, UNHCR Bureau Director for Asia and the Pacific.

1 November 2024 Also available in:

A group of women walk, laughing, through a village in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Meefah Ahsong (second from right) is a caseworker with UNHCR partner NGOs Legal Community Network (LCN) and Legal Advocacy Walk (LAW) who helps others in the Chiang Mai region of Thailand with their citizenship applications.

The Thai Cabinet’s approval of an accelerated pathway to permanent residency and nationality for nearly half a million stateless people is a historic development.

This decision brings long-awaited relief for 335,000 longtime residents and members of officially recognized minority ethnic groups and nearly 142,000 of their children born in Thailand.

This will lead to a dramatic reduction of statelessness in the country, resolving the situation of the majority of nearly 600,000 people registered as stateless in Thailand.

Thailand continues to be a leader in the eradication of statelessness. It pledged at the Global Refugee Forum 2023 to resolve statelessness and was among the founding members of the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, launched by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in Geneva last month.

The country has also been an active participant in “Get Every One in the Picture”, the campaign by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to make 2015-2024 the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Decade for the region.

UNHCR looks forward to continuing to work closely with the Royal Thai Government on the implementation of this decision and to ending statelessness.