Accessibility for Educational Services of Stateless Students in Sahasartsuksa School, Chiang Rai Province

Abstract

The study of “Accessibility for Educational Services of Stateless Students in Sahasartsuksa School, Chiang Rai Province” has three objectives; (1) to analyse the opportunities, problems and obstacles for stateless students’s access to educational services which leads to citizenship granting (2) to study government and school’s administrators’ policies which support educational services of stateless students (3) to provide recommendation in order to increase opportunities for stateless students to access into educational services. Based on the interviewswith government officials, school administrators, personnels, and students (headmaster, teachers, stateless students), and NGOs advocating for citizenship, the research discovers three main points; First, the research found that there are legal and governmental policies and guidelines in place yet there are still obstacles for stateless students to receive education services and citizenship rights. These obstacles are lack of staff in dealing with this issues, biases and negative attitude of government officials towards stateless person, insufficient evidence to be submitted for cititizenship and the corruption. Second, on the school level, the policies to provide free education service for stateless students is in place. In addition, the school also support the process of stateless students request for citizenship. Third, the research discovered that NGOs in the local areas have continuously support stateless students to get access to education and request for citizenship process.

Three recommentions can be drawn from the findings: (1) to create better understanding especially for the government officials regarding stateless persons. (2) to increase the number of government officials dealing with the process of citizenship requests (3) advocate the local community about statelessness and citizenship rights for stateless students in order to minimize the problem of exploitation of stateless students during the citizenship request process.