Experience in Solving Statelessness and Nationalitylessness in Thailand: Identification, Prevention, Reduction and Protection (PREFACE)

A paper for the International Symposium on “Human Rights and Support for the Stateless People around the World: Japan’s Role” held by the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan, 26-27 February 2011.

It is apparent that issues of nationality including statelessness have emerged on earth for such a long time. More, the situations have evolved complicatedly and differently depending on the context of each country of concerned. It is, therefore, difficult to point out that best practices for solving stateless and nationalityless problems in one country are perfectly matched with another country. Various factors such as legal system in the country, political issues, geographical areas, history, or even variety of people who have the problems have to be taken into account for the situation management as a whole. However, successes and failures in the efforts to solve statelessness and nationalitylessness in Thailand may reflect some crucial lesson learned for the other countries to be prepared for the problems in its own appropriate way, more or less.

This article aims to reflect experiences in solving statelessness and nationalitylessness in Thailand into these four specialized types of work: Identification, Prevention and Reduction of Statelessness and Protection of Stateless Persons, differentiated by the Executive Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. Nevertheless, such implementation presented in the article has been developed under the context of Thailand as followings..