It can often take years for a stateless person to become a Thai citizen - not anymore. The government has launched a new initiative that will dramatically reduce the time to just five days for most of the Kingdom’s half-million ethnic and undocumented people.

Since June 30, members of ethnic minority groups in the Kingdom have become eligible to obtain Thai nationality within five days of applying, according to a post by Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on her Facebook page.

“I would like to offer my heartfelt congratulations to all our ethnic brothers and sisters who have long awaited a resolution to the issue of citizenship and legal status. This prolonged wait is finally coming to an end on June 30,” she wrote.

Prime Minister Paetongtarn said that more than 480,000 ethnic people across Thailand’s 76 provinces were still awaiting verification of their nationality and legal status at the time of the launch. The northernmost province of Chiang Rai in the Golden Triangle had the highest number with 90,000 stateless individuals.

Thailand’s location, particularly its northern and western regions, is at the heart of lands that ethnic and hilltribe groups have roamed for centuries in annual treks to search for food, trade goods and farm. With the emergence of nation states, many of these peoples were excluded from citizenship because, living in remote and isolated areas, they could not register their births.

Successive Thai governments have attempted to solve the situation – and have been praised in recent years by the United Nations and other human rights groups – but progress, nonetheless, remained painfully slow for those waiting and bureaucracies proved difficult to untangle.

“This has deprived ethnic communities of fundamental rights, including access to state welfare, housing, employment, travel, and civic participation,” Prime Minister Paetongtarn said.

On the day of the launch, she flew to Chiang Rai province and handed out Thai national identification cards to 21 representatives of ethnic minority groups.

Photo: https://www.thaigov.go.th