Thailand: Protect Unaccompanied Refugee Children, Provide Legal Status, Prevent Detention

Following the disappearance of six Rohingya refugee children from a government-run shelter in Chiang Mai on March 21, 2025, the Government of Thailand should ensure that all refugee children in the country have access to legal status and human rights-based alternatives to detention, Fortify Rights said today. The disappearance of the children raises serious concerns about their safety, including the risk of human trafficking, and underscores the urgent need for robust child-protection measures, particularly for refugees fleeing atrocities in Myanmar.

“Looking the other way when refugee children disappear from a shelter is not the behavior of a rights-respecting government,” said Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights. “Thai authorities should urgently take bold, transparent steps to ensure that all refugee children are protected.”

On December 20, 2024, Thai police in Mae Ping District, Chiang Mai, arrested a group of six unaccompanied Myanmar national Rohingya refugee children, aged between 14 and 17. In February 2025, Fortify Rights visited the six Rohingya refugee children and briefly spoke with two of them. At the time, the children were in Thai police custody awaiting trial—a reflection of Thailand’s lack of safeguards for refugee children.

The children told Fortify Rights that they had been transported to Thailand from their native Rakhine State in Myanmar by human smugglers who promised to take them onward to Malaysia. When the children reached Thailand, the smugglers demanded additional money to complete the journey. When neither the children nor their relatives in Myanmar met the smugglers’ demands, the smugglers abandoned them—a common practice among human traffickers—and Thai police in Chiang Mai arrested and detained the children. The children told Fortify Rights how their families had paid more than 85 lakh Myanmar Kyat (approximately US$2,800) to a smuggler to facilitate their travel from Myanmar to Malaysia via Thailand.

On March 5, 2025, the Chiang Mai Juvenile and Family Court found the Rohingya children guilty of “illegal entry” under the 1979 Immigration Act and ordered their deportation back to Myanmar. On March 6, 2025, Fortify Rights sent a letter to Pol. Col. Surachai Aeampung, head of Chiang Mai Immigration Police, urging Thai authorities to stop the forced return of the Rohingya children to Myanmar and to release them from police custody.

On March 7, the Thai authorities moved the children to the Chiang Mai Children and Family Shelter, a government-run care facility, in line with the 2019 Memorandum of Understanding on ending child immigration detention in Thailand. On March 11, Fortify Rights sent an urgent request to the Thai Senate Committee on Political Development People Participation, Human Rights, Right and Liberty and Consumer Protection. The letter asked the Committee to ensure the protection of the six Rohingya children. The Senate Committee investigated the situation by requesting expert advice from relevant government and United Nations authorities, and visiting the children at the Chiang Mai Children and Family Shelter. On March 21, all six children disappeared from the facility. Fortify Rights believes that the children may have been smuggled out of the shelter and through a well-established human smuggling and trafficking route to Malaysia.

Nationwide figures quantifying the number of refugee children in institutional care facilities in Thailand are not publicly available. However, a recent rapid assessmentcommission by UNICEF and the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand found that in 2024, there were a total of 3,693 unaccompanied and separated children from Myanmar in 99 institutional care facilities in the three Northern Thai provinces of Tak, Chiang Mai, and Chiang Rai alone. The study also found an average of 37 unaccompanied and separated Myanmar children per care facility, representing a 38% increase on the same figures from 2019.

Many Myanmar refugee children in Thailand risk languishing in institutional care facilities for years, according to Fortify Rights research. Refugee children in such situations lack access to protective legal status affording them basic rights or a pathway to freedom and security.

Thailand is not party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, so does not formally recognize refugee status as defined by the Convention. After almost four years of delay, in September 2023, Thailand launched a domestic system to identify and offer limited protections to refugees, known as the National Screening Mechanism (NSM). Refugees granted “protected person” status under the NSM are protected from arrest and detention, and are also afforded other basic rights. According to an update provided by the Thai government to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees’ executive committee, as of October 2024, only seven individuals had been granted protection under the NSM in the year following the establishment of the mechanism—a minuscule number compared to the more than 90,000 refugees, the vast majority of whom are Myanmar nationals, living in Thailand.

Fortify Rights has consistently called for reforms of the NSM to ensure the widest possible coverage of protection for refugees in Thailand. In particular, Fortify Rights has raised concerns with the government that vulnerable groups of refugees, including the Rohingya, could be arbitrarily excluded from the NSM on broadly defined “national security” grounds.

A letter, seen by Fortify Rights, sent by Thailand’s Office of the Council of State to the Office of the Secretary of the Cabinet, dated December 18, 2019, explicitly argued for the exclusion of Rohingya from Myanmar, Uyghurs from China, and North Koreans on national security grounds, a policy which appears to remain in place.

Although national security can form grounds for measures taken against specific refugees, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights noted that restrictions on rights based on national security are justified only when there is “force or a threat of force” against “the existence of the nation or its integrity or political independence.” This presents a very high standard that should not be invoked to deny an individual protection or access to protection mechanisms without a reasonable basis grounded in evidence. In particular, such grounds should not be used to deny protected status to entire ethnic groups such as the Rohingya, Uyghurs, or North Koreans.

Article 22 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Thailand is a state party, guarantees that child refugees, whether accompanied or unaccompanied by their parents, receive “appropriate protection.” Thailand became a party to the CRC in 1992 but maintained a reservation to Article 22 until August 30, 2024. According to Thai authorities, their decision to withdraw the reservation to Article 22 shows Thailand’s “determination to continue to promote and protect children’s rights on the basis of non-discrimination and the best interests of the child.”

“By failing to provide refugee children with legal status and protection, the Thai government is exposing them to exploitation, abuse, and even disappearance,” said Matthew Smith. “Thailand has an opportunity to show regional leadership by upholding its human rights obligations and ensuring every refugee child is protected—not punished—for seeking safety.”

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