to neighboring countries. These tribes also historically faced systematic discrimination in birth registration, which made it difficult for Thai-born children to acquire citizenship documents (ibid., 32-33). These provisions also affected children of refugees born in Thailand. Many refugees from Myanmar and Laos lacked Thai permanent residence at the time of their children’s birth. Consequently, their Thai-born children were not eligible for Thai nationality (Rijken et al., 30-31; IOS 2019b). Most of the children born to refugees from Myanmar are ineligible for citizenship in that country due to a 1982 law barring many ethnic minorities from citizenship. Most Thai-born children of Hmong refugees, the bulk of which were resettled in the United States, are not eligible for Lao citizenship (ILCM 2008). The Thai government has begun to take steps to eradicate statelessness within its borders. A 2008 amendment granted individuals whose nationality was revoked by the 1972 decree the right to apply for Thai citizenship, provided they could furnish documentation of their birth and subsequent residence in Thailand (Rijken et al, 2015, 13). In 2017, up to 80,000 children of migrants born in Thailand were allowed to apply for citizenship if they had either lived there for 15 or more years or obtained a university degree (ILO 2017). Despite these reforms, many in Thailand remain stateless (UNHCR 2019b). The Thai-born of Hmong, Lahu, Lisu, Yao, and Shan ethnicities are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness. Thai-born children of Lao Hmong refugees and Karen, Chin, and Shan refugees from Myanmar who arrived in the United States after 1982 are also potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness. Many children born in China lack birth registration and may be at risk of statelessness if they leave China. Chinese law requires that parents register their children at birth in a family booklet known as the “hukou” in order for children to be recognized as citizens. Due to China’s “One Child” policy, which until 2013 barred many Chinese parents from having multiple children, parents with more than one child had difficulties registering their births in the hukou. Parents who could not afford to pay penalty fees often did not register their children. Mothers without a marriage certificate, parents who carried out informal adoptions, and women who refused to implement contraceptive measures were sometimes not permitted to register their children in the hukou (ISI 2014, 81). Even though many unregistered children gain recognition later in life and others are, in theory, entitled to Chinese citizenship, the Chinese government has denied recognition and travel documents to some unregistered Chinese living abroad (Gordon 2017). Chinese-born individuals who are unregistered in the hukou are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness. In the aftermath of China’s occupation of Tibet in 1949 and conflict in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, in 1959, thousands of Tibetans fled to Nepal and India. Several thousand more fled annually to India through Nepal until 2008, when China tightened restrictions on Tibetan emigration (Tibet Justice Center 2016, 6). 26