By Heather Askew | Project Leader
This year we have had exciting progress with three cases completing their ID card process and one more scheduled for completion in the coming months. However, we also have been dealing with one province in particular that refuses to move cases forward and has had them sitting on the desk waiting for review for 18 months already with no sign of progress. This is exceedingly frustrating as those cases have been in process for almost a decade.
Case completion: Suwit and Koranid got their citizenship cards in May! Otto got his permanent residency card in May as well. He will be eliigible for citizenship when he completes university but he is only in 6th grade now, so he has a long wait ahead of him.
In pipeline for completion: Nasae will finally get her citizenship at the age of 60! She is one of the grandmas in our Building Family Dreams program and just had the final interview with her witnesses and signed all the paperwork on June 21. We just wait for them to tell us when her ID number has been assigned and she will get her card.
In Fang and Chiang Dao, we have multiple cases that have had one setback after another. As soon as one issue is resolved, the staff finds another issue to prevent the case from moving forward. Now, after the paperwork sitting on the director's desk for 18 months, suddenly the birth certificate of one of the clients is "missing" so we will need to go back to the lower level authority to get that paperwork and submit it again. This process legally should take 90 days, and it's been a year and a half. It is so frustrating working with government workers who don't want to do their duty, but we keep plugging along, hoping things will change and trying to prevent our clients from not losing hope.
New cases: just this past week, we were asked for assistance on 2 cases for 4 girls born in Thailand but without the papers to get their citizenship cards. This isn't impossible but it does take time and a lot of travel. One of the districts where the girl was born is 6 hours from where she lives now, so those are long days to work on those cases. We appreciate the support from our donors who make it possible to keep helping these clients get the rights that are due to them and move them from stateless to citizens.
By Heather Askew | Project Leader
By Heather Askew | Project Leader
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