Recent developments relating to statelessness in Thailand and the Philippines
Efforts to respond to stateless populations are ongoing in the region. For example, in the Philippines, in a December 2022 case note, D. Gatmaytan, from the University of the Phillippines, noted that ‘[r]emarkably, the struggles of Senator Poe as a foundling and the decisions of the Supreme Court in the Poe cases were crucial in the creation and passage of the Foundling Recognition and Protection Act in May 2022 and the Act’s implementation of rules and regulations in September 2022’. The Act now formally recognises foundlings as Filipino citizens, which expands the definitions in the Constitution. As stated by Senator Grace Poe, co-author of the Bill in the Senate, ‘the passage of the Act was a victory that ensured abandoned children [would enjoy] equal treatment and every available service due [to] them’.
As for Thailand, it is home to one of the largest stateless populations in the world. In August 2022, UNICEF’s Country Office brought together 19 migrant, stateless and urban refugee children and youth for a workshop on empowerment; children and youth learnt about their rights and explored new ways of participation in their communities. This included a significant focus on the right to a legal identity. This builds on the work of UNICEF with partners that have helped around ‘32,000 stateless children attain legal status and Thai citizenship through mobile civil registration units at schools in Thailand’s northern border areas’.
CHIP welcomes these important efforts to reduce statelessness through child participation in local communities, thereby ensuring that child victims of statelessness understand their right to identity and to improve the implementation of the right to a legal identity amongst abandoned children.
Sources: UNICEF, Empowering children and youth affected by migration to become powerful agents of change, September 2022, https://www.unicef.org/thailand/blog/empowering-children-and-youth-affected-migration-become-powerful-agents-change; Gatmaytan, D. (2022). The Poe Cases. The Statelessness & Citizenship Review, 4(2), 309-315, https://statelessnessandcitizenshipreview.com/index.php/journal/article/view/441.
