Thailand is rapidly ageing. Every child in the country -- regardless of nationality -- needs access to care and education to help meet the country's economic challenges ahead. It is a huge mistake for officialdom to deny stateless children an education and care just because they are non-Thais. This bigotry must end.
Twenty years from now, the elderly population will have jumped from 12 million to 20.5 million. Thailand needs a young workforce to support them. Given the country's low birth rate, the government cannot ignore stateless children. With equal education and work opportunities, they can become valuable members of society.
Despite the government's Education for All policy, many stateless children still have not received proper support and protection. It must find out why and remove the hindrances immediately.
Fairly speaking, the government's education policy for stateless children is heading in the right direction. The problem is poor policy implementation. In 2005, it extended educational opportunities to all undocumented children. In line with the Education for All policy, they finally have the right to all levels of education.
The government also provides the education budget for Thai and non-Thai children, from kindergarten to Mathayom Six (Grade 12), or 15 years of free education.
Furthermore, completing Mathayom Six has been set to be compulsory. Since most Mathayom Six students are 18 years old, this policy keeps children in school. Consequently, the country's child labour problem has declined.
Since these children are not in Thailand's civil registration system, they are placed in a special category to justify the per capita education spending. It is called the G system because the children's temporary identity numbers begin with the letter G.
But the ad hoc G numbers apply only in schools. These marginalised children still lack legal status, which robs them of many types of welfare support.
In 2008, the Department of Provincial Administration under the Interior Ministry fixed this problem by amending the civil registration law to give everyone legal status, including the stateless, in accordance with their actual conditions. The aim was to compile actual statistics of people living in Thailand for effective policy-making.
Under the new law, Thai nationals receive Thai ID cards and non-Thais get non-Thai ID cards. It is unofficially called the 13-number card, applicable at all state agencies.
As for stateless students, schools have already certified their status. District officials must give them legal status in the civil registration system by issuing them with the 13-number ID cards at once.
An excellent policy. Yet the implementation is progressing at a snail's pace.
In 2020, there were 78,897 stateless children under the G system, according to the Education Ministry. Since district officials refused to process the schools' requests for the civil registration of their stateless students, the number of students in the ad hoc G system increased to 103,223 this year.
The youngsters suffer as a result -- they still lack access to other welfare initiatives as well as higher education opportunities.
One of them is Amma (not her real name). Born in Thailand in 2006, she is now 16 and is studying in Mathayom 4. Her mother already has an ID card for non-Thais. Her school has also certified her status with her local residency. Under the law, she must receive an ID card for stateless students.
Yet the teenager is stuck in the G system. As a result, she does not have access to public health services and faces many difficulties in pursuing higher education. More than 100,000 children face the same hardship.
Whatever the civil registration law says, the crux of the problem can only be ethnic discrimination among some local officials who block legal status requests in the bureaucratic maze.
Subsequently, many schools, particularly those along the Myanmar border, are facing great difficulties in getting ID cards for their stateless students. The situation worsened in 2020 when the Department of Local Administration ordered local administrations to stop providing free lunches to G system students.
This heartless order will greatly affect the vulnerable children's development potential. As a result, the country loses valuable human resources as a result.
If the government does not act now to curb discrimination, the country will soon suffer. The higher-ups must ensure that district officials obey the civil registration law and issue the 13-number ID cards to stateless children at once. If they fail to do their duties, the officials must be punished.
