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News & Updates

Meeting on Birth Registration and Statelessness hosted by UNESCO Bangkok

On 20 April 2007, UNESCO Bangkok hosted a meeting on birth registration and statelessness in Thailand.

The purpose of the meeting was to bring together organizations working on issues of birth registration and/or statelessness in Thailand.  Representatives from a number of UN agencies, international organizations and NGOs attended the meeting including: UNHCR, UNIAP, UNICEF, Plan Thailand, JRS, Knowing the Children, FACE and World Vision. In coming together, these organizations hope to cultivate a better means of sharing information and collaborating with one another.

Some of the main discussion points during the meeting were the problems created by the existence of differing statistics regarding birth registration and statelessness, collaboration between the government and agencies to construct a more inclusive registration system, and the integration of data collected by each agency’s studies and surveys.

Some projects currently being worked on are;

1) A survey of various children in primary and secondary schools by Plan Thailand;
2) An upcoming meetings with Government officials by UNHCR;
3) A survey to community based organizations by Knowing Children;
4) A partnership with Payab University to run a legal center in Mea Ai funded by UNICEF;
5) An analysis of a survey of 63,724 people from 12,719 highland households out of 16,408 households within 191 villages in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and Mae Hong Son provinces by UNESCO.

The next meeting will be hosted by the UNHCR on June 4, 2007 at the United Nations Building in Bangkok.