Children's Legal Rights Journal

their odds of survival in such unsanitary conditions.280 Status determinations by an outside international organization with the proper resources would provide a pathway to recognize these particular needs.281 Although Thailand has created a new policy since 2013, allowing children under age twelve into shelters rather than immigration detention centers, boys over age twelve would still be with adults in the detention centers.282 The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child has been clear in its policy: “[C]hildren should never be detained because of their immigration status.”283 In excluding unaccompanied boys from shelters, Thailand places them at greater risk of harm and trafficking.284

In an article from the Integrated Regional Information Network, Phil Robertson, the
deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia, asserted,
The Rohingya should have a right to apply for asylum and have the right
to go through a full refugee status determination process overseen by the
UNHCR with the Thai authorities . . . . If they are found to be refugees they
should be provided with all entailed in terms of protection, not just temporarily
but over the long term if needed.285

Thailand’s failure to recognize stateless people like the Rohingya complicates this process.

This complication stems from Thailand’s ban against the UNHCR to conduct refugee status determinations for Burmese refugees.286 Although Thailand has technically lifted this ban, the human trafficking rings and overcrowded conditions have made access to registration difficult.287 Thailand did not put a new process in place, instead declaring that there would be no legal status for the refugees outside camps.288 Although the UNHCR still informally determines international refugee status, the refugee will be settled in a third country, as Thailand does not recognize this international identification and thus provides no legal protection.289 Even if Thailand reinstated its own past processes,290 Thailand still requires documentation of citizenship that the Rohingya do not possess; in fact, “no member of the [ASEAN] has procedures for designating an individual as stateless. Instead, the protection of stateless individuals is . . . dealt with on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis.”291

Before attempting to reinstate or create a process integrated into Thai law, Thailand should immediately allow greater access by the UNHCR, in the short-term, to help determine the status of the Rohingya.292 The UNHCR process of conducting status determination as required under the 1951 Refugee Convention offers the best protection of the human rights of the

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280 Id.

281 Myanmar Rohingya Asylum Seekers Safe in Thailand, For Now, supra note 265.

282 Children Face Critical Trafficking Dangers, supra note 274.

283 Id.

284 Id.

285 Myanmar Rohingya Asylum Seekers Safe in Thailand, For Now, supra note 265 (internal quotation marks omitted).

286 GAPS IN REFUGEE PRO TECTION, supra note 82, at 4–5; Frelick & Saltsman, supra note 78.

287 Rohingya in Thailand-Safe For Now, supra note 278.

288 Id.

289 E-mail from Alan Morison, supra note 61.

290 GAPS IN REFUGEE PRO TECTION, supra note 82, at 4–5.

291 Alec Paxton, Finding a Country to Call Home: A Framework for Evaluating Legislation to Reduce Statelessness in Southeast Asia, 21 PAC. RIM L. & POL’Y J. 623, 633–34 (2012).