UN agency launches campaign to combat statelessness

[News_Editor]

UN agency launches campaign to combat statelessness

2011-08-26 04:09:52 GMT+7 (ICT)

UNITED NATIONS (BNO NEWS) -- The United Nations refugee agency on Thursday launched a campaign to help an estimated 12 million people worldwide who are denied basic rights due to their lack of citizenship.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched the campaign five days ahead of the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness which has only been signed by 38 States.

Stateless people face denial of basic rights, including access to jobs, housing, education and health care. They may also not be able to own property, open bank accounts, get married legally, or register the birth of a child. Some may even deal with long periods of detention because they cannot prove their identity or domicile.

"These people are in desperate need of help because they live in a nightmarish legal limbo," said António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "This makes them some of the most excluded people in the world. Apart from the misery caused to the people themselves, the effect of marginalizing whole groups of people across generations creates great stress in the societies they live in and is sometimes a source of conflict."

A person becomes stateless after the dissolution or formation of nations and the transfer of territories and redrawing of boundaries. In the process of separation, many people can be excluded from citizenship if new laws are not carefully drafted, said Mark Manly, the head of the statelessness unit at UNHCR.

In the 1990s, the break-up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia left hundreds of thousands throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia stateless. Recently, South Sudan became a new State but it remains to be seen how new citizenship laws in both the north and south will be implement.

The UN agency has also highlighted the themes underlying most stateless situations, such as ethnic, racial and gender discrimination as well as the fact that statelessness can be self perpetuating and affect the children of stateless parents.

Women remain the most vulnerable group to statelessness. According to UNHCR analysis, at least 30 countries maintain citizenship laws that discriminate against women.

However, there is a growing trend for States to take action to remedy gender inequality in citizenship laws. Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya and Tunisia have amended their laws to grant women equal rights as men to retain their nationality and pass their nationality to their children, UNHCR pointed out.

Though the plight of stateless people extends throughout the world, the most affected areas are in South-East Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

Current groups excluded from citizenship include the Muslim residents (Rohingya) of northern Rakhine state in Myanmar, some hill tribes in Thailand, some Roma people in various European countries and the Bidoon in the Gulf countries.

Although UNHCR puts the number of stateless people roughly at 12 million globally, an exact figure has been difficult to compile. The UN campaign's goal is to raise awareness on the international legal definition as well as improving its own methods for gathering data on stateless populations.

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