Thailand has no policy to detain migrant children

In response to a new report by international advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, the ministry said that women and children awaiting deportation are housed in a shelters. But some children "are not able to tell their real ages or intentionally lie about it" to stay with their fathers or male migrants and end up in detention centres.

The detention of children was the result of "the preference of their migrant parents themselves" as well as "logistical difficulties" rather than government policy, it said.

There are many reasons why they end up there: Thai law allows any foreign national who enters the country illegally to be detained pending deportation, which will be done at his or her own expense. Those who cannot pay, or face persecution in their home countries, risk an indefinite wait in a detention centre.

Alice Farmer, author of the report titled "Two Years With No Moon: Immigration Detention of Children in Thailand", said "I was surprised by the severity of the situation in Thailand."

She has looked into how countries like Indonesia, Britain, and Italy handle the same issue.

She estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 children pass through Thailand's immigration detention centres each year, out of which about 100 to 200 end up there on a long-term basis.

Farmer added "It's a choice between a rock and a hard place." Parents choose to take their children into detention centres with them because they would otherwise risk losing touch with their children indefinitely.

She stresses that there are more humane and financially viable options to detention. In the Philippines, for example, refugees and asylum seekers are issued documents and released on condition that they report themselves periodically and comply with the refugee determination process. This is more sustainable, and also develops self-reliance, she says.

The report detailed dozens of personal accounts from the detained children, including one from Kah, a 17-year-old Myanmar national.

He was detained by Thai authorities for one month in Chiang Mai after he was found without documents. He was kept in a filthy cell with about 50 men and one five-year-old boy.

The boy's mother, held in a different cell, could only see him one hour every day. She spent a lot of time sitting by the cell door calling his name. There is nothing much Kah and his fellow detainees could do, except to try to make the distraught boy laugh.

HRW's report noted that an uncertain fate awaits children of asylum seekers and illegal migrants when their parents are detained in Thailand.