A small step in the right direction

It may be just a glimpse of hope, but it’s a laudable start all the same. Efforts to help stateless children in Thailand by giving them proper education are benefiting a minuscule number of those kids, who some reports say number over a million. Yet what’s promising is the political acknowledgement that something needs to be done. Whether that acknowledgement is out of humanitarian concern or something selfish does not matter, because the issue is crying out for serious attention.
Fewer than 2,000 stateless children in Tak province, which borders Myanmar, have been given temporary identity cards, which do not constitute Thai nationality but will give them access to primary education. More such certificates will be handed out in the province, where the problem of stateless children is one of the country’s most serious.
The cards will open ways for, but not guarantee, further education, or even Thai nationality in the future. Two years ago, the United Nations said over a million stateless children in Thailand were in need of access to education, the majority of whom were 5-15 years of age. Concern was focused on children from Myanmar and the fact that the emergence of the Asean Economic Community could make their “labour movement” more fluid and thus make it more difficult in many ways. This was in addition to family pressure, which often prompted stateless kids lucky enough to get education to drop out of school to enter the illegal labour market.
This issue, therefore, requires close cooperation among Asean countries. Clearly, it can easily snowball into problems of child abuse, human trafficking and 
prostitution. Law enforcement needs to be strict, permanent 
and consistent. Children slip under the radar better than adults, so 
a monitoring system has to be 
effective. Records show that once stateless children drop out of 
school or disappear from records, they are likely to go “underground” forever.
Thailand understandably has the largest number of migrant children in Southeast Asia. As of 2015, there were some 3 million stateless people in the country. Many of them conceived their children in Thailand, whereas a far smaller percentage brought their children across the border. The country’s problem, some observers say, has more to do with the “follow-up” system than the law, as the government adopted a resolution as early as 2005 to allow stateless people to study in Thai schools.
In addition to being a moral thing to do, helping these kids can yield good economic and social results. Their education can only benefit Thailand and the region as a whole. Everyone must try, as the issue could have far-reaching repercussions if left unattended.
According to the United Nations, a stateless child is born every 10 minutes in millions of families across the globe. Stateless childhood is often characterised by despair, exploitation, discrimination and frustration, which set the stage for something worse when they grow older. Despite a UN campaign to change citizenship laws so children can be eligible for citizenship in their country of birth, statelessness affects millions of children worldwide.
The Thai move may only scratch the surface of this mammoth issue, yet anything that can lead to awareness, big or small, about children’s well-being is welcome. Cultivating the awareness is more or less the same as cultivating the children. Results may not come overnight, but when they finally do, they can be very refreshing.