1. Discriminatory nationality laws
In the process of Thai nation-building in the 20th Century, Thai ethnicity and citizenship were deeply entwined. Members of nine ethnic groups often referred to as ‘hill-tribe’ or ‘highland’ communities living in the North West of the country were largely excluded from recognition as citizens (excluded from earlier jus soli citizenship provisions), access to services and official citizen surveys until the mid-to-late 20th Century. Following extensive activism and advocacy led by affected communities in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s thousands of members of ‘highland’ communities have gained citizenship, however distribution of citizenship across ethnic groups is not unanimous and thousands still lack access to citizenship. Today, members of these communities continue to be denied freedom of movement and lack access to a wide range of rights including voting, ability to own land, access to bank credit, and employment.
While the 2008 amendments to the Nationality Act allowed for foreign spouses to apply for Thai citizenship without the requirement of permanent residence, the Act still does not allow for full gender equality in the ability to confer citizenship to foreign spouses. An alien woman married to a Thai man applying for citizenship will be granted citizenship by birth; however, an alien man married to a Thai woman will gain citizenship by naturalization only, which warrants different political rights. Citizenship acquired through naturalization is less secure than citizenship by birth with the decision to revoke citizenship by naturalization being up to the discretion of the government.
Before the 2008 amendment to the Nationality Act, many Thai women lost their nationality as a result of provisions that stipulated that a Thai woman who marries a foreign man voluntarily loses her Thai citizenship. As a result, some women who became stateless as a result of losing Thai citizenship and being unable to acquire their husband’s citizenship may still be resolving their cases.
2. Lack of Legal Safeguards Against Childhood Statelessness
Thailand’s citizenship legislation may provide avenues to citizenship to children of stateless parents who have regularised stay in Thailand but this does not apply for those children whose parents are residing in the country illegally or on a temporary basis. An amendment to civil registration legislation in 2019 allowed foundlings to acquire Thai nationality through naturalization; however, there are many conditions of naturalization that limit many foundlings from accessing the naturalization process.
3. Administrative Barriers
Administrative barriers have continued to limit the ability of members of ‘highland’ communities to gain citizenship. Differentiation in treatment by officials, lack of documentation, ingrained concepts of communities as ‘mobile’ and physical/ geographic barriers to accessing communities have complicated the citizenship application/ verification process. The application process has been reported to take 4.5 years on average, delaying stateless persons’ enjoyment of rights. Additionally, travel to offices to process citizenship applications is long and costly, creating further barriers to accessing the application process. Stateless persons have only been allowed to travel within and outside of their province freely since 2016. There are also reports that village heads, district officials, and police often demand a bribe to process a stateless person’s application for citizenship as well as to pass through checkpoints during travel.
A 2008 amendment to the Civil Registration Act increased access to birth registration for many hill tribe members. Before the amendment, identity documentation, household registration, and official birth notifications were required for birth registration, which the hill tribe members were mostly unable to provide. Now, such documents are not required and births can be registered in any District Office, regardless of birthplace. However, while Thailand reported a birth registration rate of 100% in 2021, a study the same year supported by UNICEF found that among a sample group of Thai-born children of migrant’s birth registration rates were only 50.2%.
