Justice and Human Rights Thailand Project #34579

Help Stateless children achieve Thai citizenship

by CORD Ministries International

Project Report | May 18, 2020
Another win for citizenship!

By Heather Askew | Project Leader

Nikki with her family and citizenship officer

For those of your who don't follow us on social media, we got Nikki her citizenship, just squeaking in before things shut down for COVID mid-March. This has been an arduous process. Nikki is the middle of 5 children and the only one who still didn't have her citizenship card. It has been a year since we completed her brother's case, and his was supposed to be the hard one! Since we started working on Nikki's case, it has been 3 years, 5 citizenship case managers, three sets of interviews (of the same people) and LOTS of paperwork. (sorry trees!) Here, there are so many paths to citizenship that none of them are clear and no one can agree on the best way to do it. I mentioned we had 5 case managers. Well, that means 5 different ideas of which path to take. In Thailand, people usually are at their job for around 6 months to a year before being transferred to a different province or department. It's supposed to help with corruption, but really it just creates chaos and a lack of investment in their job. Our final guy got the job done though, so we are very thankful! We showed our appreciation with a basket of fresh fruit for the officer. Now Nikki is eligible for school scholarships through her school so she can continue her studies and go to college. She just graduated from 9th grade, which is the mandatory minimum here, and after that you have to pay for school. Many schools provide scholarships but only for citizens. Now she is eligible for those scholarships! Of course, we would have helped cover the cost of her tuition regardless, but we are happy she has other options so we can assist other families in her situation.

For more stories like this, follow us on social media!

Permalink

Jan 24, 2020
2020 off to a good start

By Heather Askew | Project Leader

Just before Christmas break, we had the opportunity to meet with an amazing woman from Chiang Rai named Meejoo. She works on citizenship rights for people in countries all over SE Asia, with an organization called IMPACT. She has an amazing life story and when she first started meeting with corrupt village leaders who were extorting money out of poor villagers to sign their paperwork, she was poisoned and nearly died! But she did not give up and now the laws have changed, far fewer village leaders are using extortion to get their community citizenship and she has helped countless children get their human right to become citizens of their birth country.

Today, we are meeting with the citizenship offices in Doi Saket, where we have 2 cases pending. Meejoo helped us understand the laws more and gave us advice on the cases. One case where the government officer said we would have to do a DNA test, she assured us that is not the case, and explained how to do that case. Hopefully, the government official will be willing to listen to us and follow the correct procedure to get this girl her citizenship so she can graduate high school and be eligible for college scholarships.

We are also finding out about our second case with the boy who has scoliosis. Apparently, they will not do a DNA test between a male and female unless they are mother and child or father and child. The only living relative this boy has is his aunt, so it makes his case much more complicated. We are hopeful they will be able to find another route to get his citizenship so he can get the surgery he needs to live a normal life. Without his citizenship, this surgery will cost around $10,000, so it makes a huge difference for him.

Next month, we will journey back to Mae Fah Luang to assist a woman whose case we worked on last year to get her 3 children registered and get their citizenship cards. We are excited about this, as one year ago, no one in the family had citizenship, and by the end of February, the whole family should have it!

Thank you for supporting this cause and we will keep you apprised of any new developments. Be assured, your donations are being used to support people who are very deserving and in need.

Permalink

Oct 14, 2019
The Great 2019 Citizenship Review

By Heather | Project Leader

2019 Has been the best year ever for citizenship cases! -May 2019: M got his citizenship card after years and years of trying! - June 2019: S and his two brothers got their cards AND Fai's sister finally got her card after decades of not having it! You can read all the details

2019 Has been the best year ever for citizenship cases!

-May 2019: M got his citizenship card after years and years of trying!

- June 2019: S and his two brothers got their cards AND Fai's sister finally got her card after decades of not having it! You can read all the details in our April update. So, in one day we got 4 cases closed! Fai's sister will need to come back in January with her oldest 2 children to get their cards, but that should be easy. We will accompany her to help with any miscommunication.

- August 2019: A, our little guy with the crazy bad scoliosis that makes his back look like a map of Mulholland Drive, finally got a Thai registration number! This is amazing news because his family were quite scared that since his parents abandoned him he wouldn't get one. Luckily, interviewing his aunt, his foster mom and us was enough to convince them. Now he has a resident card for ten years. We got a letter requesting a DNA test for him and his aunt. Once that gets processed (about 3 months) we will go back in with the village chief and his aunt and he will get his full Thai citizenship! Then, he can apply for his low income health card which will allow him to get his back surgery in a couple of years for a fraction of the price. They estimate the cost without the insurance card is about $10,000, but with the insurance card, it should be around $1000.

- October 1, 2019: N, M's younger sister, went to get her citizenship card, but we ran into some more difficulties in the computer system. It's still a little unclear why she has been unable to get it and why the system is not allowing them to bypass the errors, but we will keep pursuing it. Thankfully, the citizenship officer is very helpful and really wants her to get her card. We just hope that he doesn't get transferred soon, like all his predecessors who also tried to help get her card.

Links:

Jojo's Sanctuary webpage

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.