Burmese Stateless Children in Thailand

l Statelessness l Numbers l Legal status l Prejudice l Abandoned children

Statelessness

A child becomes stateless at birth, if he or she does not acquire a nationality at birth according to the law of any State.

The exact number of individuals affected by statelessness is not known. Refugees International believes the low end estimate to be over 11 million. Burmese children born in Thailand form anywhere between 500,000 to 1 million of these numbers.

Children born to Burmese migrant workers and members of Burma’s ethnic minorities in Thailand are considered to be illegal immigrants. Discriminatory and corrupt actions by Thai officials has resulted in the children of "illegals" being denied birth certificates.

Without birth certificates these children are stateless.

The denial of birth certificates is carried out to make it difficult for Burmese children to claim Thai citizenship. These children, if permitted to return to Burma by the regime, will under the Burmese Citizenship Act be either denied full citizenship, or have no nationality. The reasons for refusing Burmese citizenship are:

1. the children do not have birth certificates;

2. the parents left Burma illegally; and/or

3) the parents themselves were never provided with proper citizenship papers.

The Thai government has issued guidelines to hospitals, on how to deal with the birth of children of parents who have illegally entered Thailand. This has not stopped hospitals refusing to record their children’s births, due to such guidelines remaining vague and without sanctions compelling its enforcement.

The children suffer by being selectively denied the rights guaranteed to them under the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Their future is bleak, due to such denial and insecurity as stateless or illegal aliens.

Burmese children born in Thailand are unwanted by the Burmese authorities, and are also of little concern to the Thai authorities. They are forced to grow up in limbo without access to proper education, public healthcare and other social welfare programmes. National security are reasons given for the lack of support and the invisible existence of the children in the eyes of the Thai government.

Numbers

There are now more than 500,000 Burmese children born in Thailand. These children are deemed stateless by the Thai authorities, and are liable to be arrested on sight and deported.

At least 2,000 Burmese children baby are born in Thai hospitals each year. They have no proper birth certificates or identifying documents.

There is no accurate numbers or estimates of Burmese migrants children in Thailand, even though there are at least four to five children born to migrants workers each day.

State hospitals record that in 2004 hospitals delivered some 50,000 babies born to migrant workers. Most of the babies are said to be Burmese.

The apparent lack of statistics is due mainly to personal hatred against Burmese by local officials, and their desire to deny these children any opportunity to become Thai residents, even though Thai law specifically bars these children from being granted Thai citizenship. These officials work contrary to official directions to document Burmese children, or they misinterpret these directions.

Legal status

Children born into statelessness in Thailand, are neither able to go back to Burma nor live in Thailand as “legal persons".

Thailand is not a party to the 1950 Refugee Convention, and it is not obliged to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to a refugee child or a child seeking refugee status. Thailand maintains that refugees are “illegal persons”, and refugee children born in Thailand are denied citizenship.

Most of the children have no access to education because they are not accepted by local school, due to being denied identification records at birth by the Thai authorities. These undocumented children are also prevent them from returning home as Burmese citizens, or going to third countries or even staying in Thailand.

Thai state authorities and media support the generation of public prejudice against Burmese immigrant workers, by portraying them as national enemies, criminals, disease carriers, drug runners and stealers of Thai jobs. Thai newspapers and TV news regularly carry reports on alleged criminal and drug activities involving illegal Burmese persons.

This situation sets up a situation of fear and isolation amongst Burmese people. The number of Burmese children being born outside hospitals in Thailand is increasing each day, due to the fear of exposure and the subsequent risk of deportation back to Burma.

Burmese workers fear to return home due to leaving Burma illegally. Should they return they face arrest and imprisonment on their return for illegally leaving the country.

Many of the workers support families in Burma where extreme poverty besets the majority of the population. Staying in Thailand where they have a chance to earn suffiicient money to support families in Burma is a high priority.

Staying invisible is a survival strategy for most Burmese workers. Consequently in Maesot, most mothers deliver their babies at home. For example, in 2002 the Mae Tao clinic recorded a total number of 2,250 women being booked in to have antenatal care at the clinic, but only a small percentage of these women proceeded with giving birth at the clinic.

“Murders, rapes, abductions, torture and other abuses of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand have occurred with alarming regularity for many years, particularly in the Mae Sot district of Tak province, but for a long time only cases of extreme brutality were ever made public. In January 2002, for instance, the bodies of at least 21 persons were found in the Mae Lamao stream. No one has ever been brought to account for that atrocity…In the past year, abuses have increased, as impunity has spread in Thailand with new government policies favouring extra-judicial killing [in the war on drugs..], and because migrant worker’s rights have been further curtailed… …In 2003, the Asian Legal Resource Centre brought its concerns to the attention of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, noting that immigration officials, police, and other officials in Thailand abuse illegal migrants at time of arrest, in detention centres, and during deportation. These abuses include extortion, physical and sexual assault, and murder. These activities by the police lead others to commit the same offences without fear of the consequences…”

Source:
http://www.amrc.org.hk/5306.htm

Abandoned children

There are increasing numbers of abandoned Burmese children, and Burmese street children each year in Maesot. A large number of young Burmese girls are working at Thai restaurant (which are at times a front for prostitution) as well as house maids. These undocumented children face the risk of being deported to Burma by the authorities, where they will suffer insurmountable difficulties due to their status in the country. Neither Burma nor Thailand will protect these children’s rights, event though they have taken on specific obligations to do so under the Convention on the Rights of The Child.