Prevent Child Trafficking Through Education

Imagine being born and raised in a country that your family has lived in for generations, and yet you are unable to become a citizen of that country. Imagine your whole family has lived in the same place for as long as anyone can remember but still does not officially belong. Your family has never even originally migrated from another country – they have always been here, yet they have never been recognized as citizens. You’re not an undocumented migrant from another country. There is no other country to “return to.” You simply don’t belong to any country. You are stateless.

“Stateless” is a term for people who don’t have citizenship in any country. Since most of us get citizenship automatically when we’re born—from the country in which we’re born—this isn’t an issue most people ever have to confront. We also generally take for granted the rights and protections that citizenship offers: the ability to attend school and get a legally recognized degree, the ability to get a driver’s license or bank account, the right to travel or move, and more. Without legal recognition of one’s identity, accessing things like education, healthcare, and a job is very hard. People in this situation often have little choice but to live on the margins of society, eking out a living unregistered and working in jobs with little protection from exploitation. This leaves people of working age vulnerable to labor exploitation. When families cannot earn enough to live on, children become vulnerable to sex trafficking as a means of survival.

You might think of statelessness as only happening to refugees or people who are politically exiled from their home country. But there are other ways it can happen, too.

Here’s how statelessness happened in the communities where we work.
In the region where we’re based, there are entire communities of stateless people. Statelessness in these communities rose out of a situation where some ethnic minorities (many of whom belonged to nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes) were historically never recognized as citizens as the country’s borders shifted back and forth over them. Though the borders have been settled for a long time, the laws have been reformed to address such gaps, and Thailand has pledged to end statelessness by 2024, it’s still a challenging process to ensure everyone is appropriately documented. Many stateless people have inherited a generational issue where they lack proper documentation to apply for citizenship. Living on the margins of society and lacking access to education, they are often unaware of the rights to which they are entitled, or the application process had previously felt so challenging they had given up trying.

In recent years, the government has worked to make the process easier, for example, by launching an e-registration process to ensure all newborns born in Thailand, regardless of parents’ nationalities, are registered and receive birth certificates. Nevertheless, it will still take time to reach everyone and help them navigate the pathways to accessing the rights to which they’re entitled.

Here’s how we help stateless children:

• First: Statelessness is one of the recognized risk factors we use to identify vulnerable children we can accept into our child trafficking prevention programs. When a stateless child is accepted into our programs, we provide scholarships to help them stay in school. This relieves a lot of the financial burden on their families as they don’t need to worry about education costs, such as school uniforms, transportation, supplies, etc.
• Second: There is a tiered system with different levels of legal recognition between undocumented and full citizenship. In select cases, our staff may help with the application process to get our students’ legal documentation, apply for a higher level of legal recognition, or even apply for citizenship. This facilitates getting our students into the system, attaining formal recognition, and accessing greater rights so they can participate more effectively in society. It’s also a form of protection so that if they ever encounter exploitation, they have a path forward for seeking justice. In cases beyond our staff capacity, we refer them to other organizations that can more effectively handle this particular kind of legal advocacy.
• Third: We have conducted a large project, in cooperation with local schools and government agencies, to identify and legally register other stateless children in the community. We reached more than 600 children in 2022 alone.
• Finally, we conduct outreach to vulnerable communities, continually spreading awareness about their legal and human rights and providing advice as needed.

Statelessness is a very extreme case for those who are most vulnerable to traffickers—namely, people who become desperate to meet their deepest needs. Children desperate for affection become vulnerable to online predators who pretend to offer that. Families desperate to survive become vulnerable to anyone offering a way to survive, no matter how exploitative it is. Legal documentation of one’s existence is one of the most basic forms of protection one can have. We’re working to help ensure every child is counted because every child matters.

Thank you for your support of these children and their families. Together, we are breaking the cycle of trafficking at the source.

In Hope,

The Freedom Story

Links:

• The Latest
• The Freedom Story Website

In celebration of our 15th anniversary, we’re sharing stories about students who have graduated from our child trafficking prevention programs. These students were identified as being at risk of trafficking and exploitation and, with the help of scholarships and mentorship, were able to turn their path from one of risk to one of resilience. This is what successful prevention looks like.

Today we’re introducing you to Kaew. Please note her name has been changed to protect her and her family’s privacy.

Kaew’s family had a hard time gaining a foothold of stability. Her parents were divorced. Originally from the Northeast region of Thailand, she and her mother and stepfather had been staying on their relatives’ property but were eventually pushed to move to the North. From a young age, she tried to support her family by helping her mother bake snacks that she could sell at school. She loved to draw and paint, but she was shy about sharing her art with others and mostly kept this part of her to herself.

The pull of the sex industry was always strong around her, and her world did not promote safety from sexual exploitation. Some of her own family members were engaged in sex work. She didn’t have a private bedroom – even as she became a teenager, she still slept with her mother and stepfather, with only a piece of cloth to separate them. And her stepfather would secretly try to watch her while she changed clothes. She did not want to be left alone with him. And she loved to talk to people online, including strangers. No one had told her how dangerous that was or how easily exploitation happens online.

How Our Prevention Programs Protected Kaew
Kaew started getting scholarships from The Freedom Story around 2015. Her mentors were very concerned about her home situation, so they talked to Kaew’s mother about doing more to protect Kaew’s privacy and safety. They convinced her to build a wall to separate their spaces to give Kaew more privacy and ensure she wasn’t left alone with her stepfather. Her staff mentors also warned Kaew about the dangers of talking to strangers online and encouraged her to be more careful about who she conversed with. Having become more aware of the problem and sensitive to propriety, her mother became much more protective of Kaew’s privacy.

Kaew thrived in The Freedom Story’s activities. She would always volunteer to lead, she’s friendly and works well with others, and she even motivated her friends to join The Freedom Story. Most importantly, she benefited from art therapy and the chance to express her feelings through this outlet.

Given the opportunity to thrive, she showed remarkable growth – her artwork was even accepted to show at Central Chiang Rai, the biggest retail center in the region. She says,
“During my time in The Freedom Story’s scholarship program, I was able to participate in a variety of activities, camps, and meetings, all of which were extremely enjoyable, helped me become more confident and encouraged me to voice my opinion, and provided me with a wealth of life lessons to apply in the future.”

Now, she is getting her Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Art Design. In the future, she wants to work in a field related to entertainment, such as costume design or graphic design.

In the meantime, her mother wanted to move back to her home region, Korat, where they could get more family support, and The Freedom Story was able to help finance the move. Kaew’s father quit his drug addiction and even gave them a house, thus beginning a friendship between her father and stepfather. Her mother’s business selling Thai desserts is thriving. Her whole family is working together to support her education.

Having graduated from our scholarship and prevention programs, Kaew says:
“I'd like to thank The Freedom Story for the scholarship they awarded me, for teaching me and providing me with positive experiences, and for helping me overcome my fears and encouraging me to be courageous. Thank you to the entire staff for always teaching me and contributing to my success.”

Thank you for taking part in the movement to end child sex trafficking and exploitation!

In Hope,

The Freedom Story

Links:

• The Freedom Story Website
• The Latest