Thailand can be a global champion in reducing the number of stateless people around the world, according to Giuseppe De Vincentiis, the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Thailand.
The country could do this by speeding up efforts to add to the more than 100,000 people it has granted citizenship to over the past three years, he said.
"Thailand is well ahead, but the challenge is how to encourage Thailand to become the champion of this issue. I believe Thailand can be the country to make a major leap forward," he told reporters recently ahead of a two-day regional meeting on stateless people that starts in Bangkok on Thursday.
Representatives from 25 Asia Pacific countries will attend the meeting to discuss issues related to stateless persons, that will be presented at a world forum in October to mark the fifth year of the UNHCR's "I Belong" campaign. Apart from dealing with refugees, the UNHCR also takes care of stateless persons.
In 2014, UNHCR launched its "I Belong" campaign with the aim of ensuring that around 10 million people are no longer classified as stateless by 2024.
Thailand is one of the countries that joined the "I Belong" campaign. The international meeting in October will be a major review of the "I Belong" campaign's achievements so far, according to Mr De Vincentiis.
He praised the Thai government's commitment to the campaign. In the last year alone, the Interior Ministry has granted citizenship to around 16,000 people. Despite this progress, the country has a long way to go to naturalise up to 400,000 people over the next five years.
"If Thailand maintains a rate of 16,000 persons per year, it will take over two decades to complete the goal," he said.
Despite supportive policies and the political will, the government still has problems, mostly related to bottlenecks in the documentation approval process.
"Sometimes, this process is not as fast as it could be,"he said.
"It requires more political willingness to expedite resources to handle workloads and simplify and streamline process,"he said.
According to the UNHCR, Thailand ranks third in the world after Myanmar and the Ivory Coast in terms of having the highest number of stateless people.
Before the UN agency's campaign began there were over 500,000 stateless people according to Interior Ministry figures.