Today, more than eleven million people around the world are citizens of no state. From Kenya to the Dominican Republic, states manipulate their citizenship laws, condemning whole ethnic groups born and raised inside their borders to statelessness, stripping them of the fundamental rights to political participation, freedom of movement, education, and employment.
The right to citizenship is under threat as never before. Since the collapse of communism in Europe, ethnic nationalism has led to the exclusion of minorities from citizenship in a number of new or successor states. In Africa, latent ethnic tensions arising from decolonization and state-building, combined with the growing significance of political rights in emerging democracies, have sparked armed conflict and left racial and ethnic minorities on the margins of society. In Asia and the Middle East, discriminatory citizenship laws perpetuate women’s inequality and disenfranchise unpopular ethnic groups. Around the world, discrimination is both a cause and consequence of statelessness. Stateless people are subject to social exclusion, sexual and physical violence, and many other human rights violations. Deliberately marginalized by governments, they remain the ultimate forgotten people, falling outside the protection and assistance of aid agencies and the United Nations.
The Open Society Justice Initiative presented a panel discussion featuring testimony by stateless people from Kenya, Burma, Pakistan, and the Dominican Republic who have joined their voices to the growing international effort to close the gap between the reality of statelessness and the promise and obligation of human rights protection.
The following advocates discussed what it means to be stateless and what they see as the necessary next steps in addressing this growing crisis:
- Adam Hussein Adam was born in and has lived his entire life in Kenya as a member of the ethnic group of Kenyan Nubians. The British colonial army forcibly conscripted these Nubians from Sudan and displaced them to settlements in Kenya. Although Nubian families have been settled in Kenya for generations, the Kenyan government does not recognize them as an ethnic minority group and denies them equal access to citizenship. Among other rights violations, Adam has been denied access to education and the right to freedom of movement. Today he is fighting to end discrimination against Kenyan Nubians.
- Naw Htoo Paw is a Karen activist who fled from Burma to Thailand in 2001 after growing up in a village where Burmese soldiers frequently forced the villagers to act as porters, raped local women, killed suspected Karen sympathizers and burnt their houses. The Karen are indigenous to lands along the frontier of Burma and Thailand and are persecuted by the Burmese government and denied citizenship by the Thai. In Thailand, the Karen are one of the ethnic minority Hill Tribe people whom the Thai government refuses to recognize as citizens.
- Syed Kamal is a dual national of Canada and Pakistan. In 2003 he began his work for the eradication of statelessness in Bangladesh, motivated by a feeling of personal responsibility to the victims of Pakistan's arbitrary denial of nationality to nearly 250,00 ethnic Urdu speakers in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
- Sonia Pierre was born on a batey, an impoverished community of Haitian sugar cane workers living in the Dominican Republic. She grew up experiencing the social, economic, and cultural barriers that prevent Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent from enjoying their basic human rights. A leader in the struggle against violence, discrimination and racism against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, she has received numerous human rights awards, and is an internationally recognized human rights advocate.
The panel was moderated by Julia Harrington, Senior Legal Officer of the Justice Initiative.
Summary
The following is a summary of the OSI forum "In Transit to Nowhere: Personal Accounts of Statelessness in the 21st Century."
Statelessness is not one of the most commonly known human rights violations, but this fact needs to change, said moderator Julia Harrington, senior legal officer of the Open Society Justice Initiative. State protection facilitates all human rights, while the lack of citizenship is often used by states to justify severely limiting individual rights. Individuals who are not recognized by any state as citizens suffer restrictions on their freedom of movement, freedom of expression, ownership of lands, access to livelihoods, political participation, and many other rights such as access to health care and education.
It's no coincidence, Harrington said, that stateless people are members of social groups that suffer discrimination at many levels.
Adam Hussein Adam, a fourth-generation Nubian in Kenya, did not realize his citizenship was in question until he was 22 years old. At the time, he recounted, he was a player on the Kenyan national rugby team. As a team member he was required to travel abroad, and he applied for a passport. Asked to produce his great-grandfather's birth certificate, which he did not have, Adam had to stop the application process. Attempts in subsequent years to acquire passports for jobs also failed, and he had to leave those jobs.
Nubians are not recognized as citizens by the Kenyan government, Adam said, and other Kenyans consider them to be foreigners. To address that predicament, he and others founded the Center for Minority Rights Development. In 2003, Nubians tried to raise the issue of citizenship discrimination by taking a constitutional case to court. Today the case has still not been heard, and no reasons have been given.
Naw Htoo Paw was born in a Burmese village in a civil-war zone. Because the Burmese government will not issue ID cards or birth certificates to them, inhabitants cannot even travel between villages. To travel to a farm to work, they must obtain a letter from the occupying military troops every day. This means getting up at 3 a.m. every morning to line up at the military camp to be issued a letter.
At the age of 18, Htoo Paw fled Burma for Thailand, where she now works for an organization that helps women and children of the Karen ethnic group. To get an ID card and passport from Burma in order to travel to attend a conference, Htoo Paw went back to Burma last year. She had to repeatedly bribe officials, and received the ID after six months of trying. To get a passport, she said, is difficult and dangerous. Because Htoo Paw has a Karen name, she was questioned extensively and received a passport only after another three months.
Statelessness is an orphan issue that is not recognized very widely, said Syed Kamal of the organization Stateless People in Bangladesh. After the 1947 partition of India, East and West Pakistan were created amid a great deal of violence and population transfer. Many of those from Bengal and Bihar went to East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. After the majority Bengali population sought independence, civil war ensued. The Urdu-speaking Biharis, who had sided with West Pakistan during the war, were hated in Bangladesh, Kamal said, and as a result widespread killings took place. Biharis were denied Bangladesh citizenship, their property was confiscated, they were fired from their jobs, and their children were expelled from schools. At the same time, Pakistan did not allow them to return because they were a linguistic minority. Over half a million people appealed to the International Red Cross, but most had to stay in Bangladesh, where they still live in extremely inhumane conditions in camps established 35 years ago.
Many Biharis secretly moved to Pakistan from Bangladesh, Kamal said. Those who did so are still refused citizenship by Pakistan and remain stateless. Without citizenship they are denied health care and education, and they languish at the bottom of the labor pool. The average Bihari earns 75 cents a day, and children as young as six have to work long hours to ensure that they have food, Kamal said.
Sonia Pierre's parents immigrated to the Dominican Republic from Haiti to seek a better life. As part of an agreement with the Dominican Republic, Haiti sends 15–20,000 farmworkers to the Dominican Republic for the sugar harvest. The sugar mills there have their own authority, Pierre said; guards treat workers as slaves, and commit torture and murder. Human rights organizations have investigated and condemned these practices, she said.
The contract with Haiti provided that the Dominican Republic return workers after six months to their country. To avoid this the government returned only about a third of the workers; those who remained were guaranteed to work the next year's harvest. Thus small immigrant settlements began forming, Pierre said. Today, fourth- and fifth-generation members of this community—many of whom have never been to Haiti—do not enjoy the right to citizenship.
Lack of citizenship, racism, and xenophobia place these communities in a lot of danger, Pierrre said. Last year the Dominican secretary of labor announced that he had a plan to "de-Haitianize" the country. That following May, a woman was murdered in the northwest part of the country, Pierre said, and Haitians were blamed. Haitian homes were burned, women and children were arrested and expelled, and an elderly pastor was brutally murdered. The violence spread throughout the country. Immigration authorities and ordinary civilians forcibly entered homes at night and beat, raped, and deported residents, Pierre said.
The Dominican constitution establishes that anyone born there is a citizen. Yet the media and the government allow these human rights abuses to happen, Pierre said. After eight years of litigation, an InterAmerican Court case ruled that the legal status of parents does not affect the nationality of the children and ordered the Dominican Republic to provide health care and education to such children. The government refused to comply, arguing that the court was interfering with its sovereignty and accusing human rights advocates of attempting to discredit the country. Pierre was herself threatened and had to leave the country. She is currently under court-ordered protection. The state, however, refuses to protect her children.
"When you have no human rights, it's almost like not having an identity," Pierre said.
Read more
Reparatory Justice
Championing Reparations for Africans and People of African Descent
The global reparations movement to address the historical injustices of slavery and colonialism is gaining momentum. Open Society is playing a key role in supporting it through strengthening its infrastructure and sustainability.
Centering African Perspectives
Q&A: How One Publication Is Reframing Narratives on Africa
For 15 years, Africa Is a Country has challenged cliched Western coverage of Africa by providing a platform for thoughtful, homegrown writing. We speak to chief editor William Shoki on promoting new ideas and engaging new audiences.
Reporting on Africa
Changing Global News Coverage of Africa Is About Acknowledging the Continent’s Rightful Place in the World
The Global Media Index for Africa assessed and ranked how 20 of the world’s most influential news providers cover the continent. The index’s creators hope it will help ensure Africa’s full story is told globally.