ThaiNGO

Plan International

Terms of reference for an external evaluator/evaluation team to conduct the end- term evaluation for the We Belong # Status Project.

1. About the Plan Organization International

We are committed to advancing children's rights and equality. Especially for girls around the world. As an independent development and humanitarian organization, we work with children, young people, our supporters and our partners to address the root causes of the challenges girls and vulnerable children face. We support children's rights from birth until adulthood and help children prepare for and respond to crises and adversity. We drive change in practice and policy at the local, national and global level, using our access to experience and knowledge. For more than 80 years, we have built powerful partnerships for children and we are active in more than 75 countries around the world.

2. Basic information of the project

We Belong #Status project has been conducting intervention activities under the situation of stateless people problem in the Northern region, where many of them are located in academic institutes under Chiang Mai educational service area which has the highest number of stateless people. Particularly, G-Code students (All units) have not yet received any solutions to legal status and basic human rights problems such as not having a legal status, lack of access to education and healthcare, not having permission to travel outside their located province and not being allowed to access formal employment opportunities. These conditions make children vulnerable to exploitation in all its forms.

Being a stateless person causes several negative impacts on life’s quality for children and youth. Stateless children and youth that can’t access to educational system will lose their opportunity to develop themselves in many ways. Many of them have lost their confidence in living because they are afraid and worried about their daily life. Being unable to access basic rights and being discriminated due to statelessness has a negative result in an opportunity to enhance their quality of life. Surely, this shall affects on economics and social development of the country in the future.

In the past 10 years, both government and non-government agencies have an attempt      to solve this problem, so that children and youth can access to basic rights through G-Code registration system (Stateless person).

However, a process on identifying 13 numbers for children and youth without legal status still faces an obstacle both policy and practice. This shall cause several children and youth being unable to receive legal status or being delay at some points for both budget and resource allocation. If this issue is considered and solved, validation process on legal status of students in the academic institutions shall be faster and more efficient, including shall eliminate statelessness of students in the academic institutes, which is a fundamental for children to access other basic rights.