CHIANG MAI, THAILAND - KP sits on a floor mat in the tidy home she shares with her parents and younger brother and sister. Two fans stir up a welcome breeze; a small cat and new puppies wander into the cool home out of the tropical heat.
IJM Thailand staff have travelled from Chiang Mai to visit KP and her family here in their home, following one of many uneven dirt roads that cut across the rolling hills of Northern Thailand. KP is telling her IJM friends how she feels now that she is a Thai citizen: "So happy!" she exclaims, her face beaming as she laughs and says she wants everyone to know - she wants to "shout out loud: ‘I have an ID card!'" KP says she hopes she'll meet a police officer soon to show him her identification card.
The ID card is proof of her citizenship - and hope for her future.
KP was born in Thailand, and, according to Thai law, KP should have been officially recognised as a citizen as soon as her mother received her citizenship papers. "I am Thai," 19-year-old KP says simply, "so I have the right to be a Thai citizen."
As she has grown older, she has started to feel the very real effects of what it means to be stateless - what it means to be claimed by no country at all. KP had to abandon her dream of becoming a nurse, because there was no way she could continue her education after high school without citizenship.
Like hundreds of thousands of hill tribe people, the ethnic minority groups living along the Northern Thailand border, KP was extremely vulnerable to a host of abuses. According to the UN, "lack of citizenship is the single greatest risk factor for hill tribe women in Thailand to be trafficked or otherwise exploited." Without citizenship, hill tribe people are not able to move about freely, and they may not be able to get legal jobs or graduate. They are not protected by Thai laws, meaning they have little recourse if they are ever the victim of a crime.
Come back later
For over ten years, KP and her family tried to prove to local authorities that she and her younger brother and sister should be counted as citizens. Over and over, they travelled to the district office two hours from their home - often all five piled onto the single motorbike. Sometimes, the district office would send them away to fetch another document, meaning they would have to make this expensive journey twice in a day. And always the verdict was the same: Come back later.
In 2009, IJM Thailand learned about KP's case. She and her brother were still waiting for their applications to be processed. Confirming that they met all of the requirements that qualified them to be counted as Thai citizens, the IJM team started to advocate on their behalf.
Over the next two years, IJM worked persistently. They simply got no response from the district office - neither an approval nor a denial, not even an acknowledgement that the application was under review. IJM followed up with the Central Government, but the response was the same: silence.
The application was simply stuck in limbo - as were KP and her brother.
KP's brother had gotten a scholarship to go to high school in Bangkok, but he continued to follow up on their applications. It was a 12-hour bus ride from Bangkok back to the district office. He made the trip about twice a week. It was risky, too, because the police could demand to see his ID card at any time - proof of his citizenship. Technically, non-citizens are not allowed to leave their home province; if they do, police may arrest or deport them as illegal immigrants. So KP's brother avoided the police and took his chances, desperate and determined that his family should not live the rest of their lives in the shadows.
Citizenship at last
In 2011, IJM filed a complaint with the Administrative Court against the district office, highlighting the office's sheer refusal to review these straightforward citizenship applications. Finally, the district office replied. They said that the applications were lost. IJM helped the siblings reapply, and within three months, KP and her brother got word that their applications had been reviewed - and approved.
It was a monumental day, but it was not the end of the battle. For that approval to have practical effect, KP and her brother needed to be added to the official household registry to receive their identification cards. Those laminated "ID cards" would secure the rights they deserved and the futures they dreamed of.
The trips to the district office continued, and IJM relentlessly followed up with the officials. Months passed. A new year arrived. And then finally, in February 2013, IJM citizenship lawyer La-aw got the call she had been waiting for: KP and her brother had been issued ID cards officially recognising them as Thai citizens.
Today, KP is working as a nurse's assistant in a home for the elderly. She is saving money towards a dream: KP wants to go back to school to become a nurse so that she can serve people in rural areas where there is not medical care. Now that she is a Thai citizen, it's a dream she can make a reality.