Citizenship remains a distant dream for stateless minorities

“In 2016, the Thai government endorsed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) #IBelong Campaign to end statelessness, pledging to attain zero statelessness by 2024? Thailand has over 480,000 registered stateless people according to UNHCR.”
Judging purely on results so far, it seems this government can carry on “endorsing” and “pledging” anything they like. Their words are meaningless.
I suppose when it comes to 2024, if the UNHCR criticises the government, there will probably be six more dates offered when the goal will be achieved – going by the many election dates up to now, which soon will be in double figures.
Bluesofa

Might I suggest that the interests of the nearly half a million stateless people, most of whom were born and grew up in the country are not actually very high on the governments list of priorities.
By contrast the interests of the smaller number of “influential” people whose various business interests benefit from the pool of unregulated exploitable labour provided by these stateless people, effectively beyond the coverage of what labour protection there is here, are probably quite high on their list.
The NGOs do sterling work, but I imagine that they are aware that the task they face is rather like urinating up Niagara Falls.
One other point, if we assume that say half of these stateless people would be of voting age, that is some quarter of a million geographically concentrated people who are unlikely to vote for “the right people”...
JAG

I suppose they need to try something along the lines of getting stuck in a cave.
Jonmarleesco