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UNHCR launches campaign to end statelessness over the next decade
Mariana Andrei - Communication Coordinator
14 January 2015
In November 2014 the United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR) launched the global campaign "I belong", which aims to solve the issue of statelessness over the next 10 years.
About ten million people worldwide are currently stateless. According to UNHCR statistics, a stateless child is born every ten minutes.
Online petition to put an end to statelessness
Lacking citizenship people do not generally have access to the rights and services which states provide to their citizens. According to UNHCR, statelessness is a legal calvary with devastating effects upon millions of people worldwide who lack a citizenship and do not benefit from the associated human rights protection. UNHCR representatives, starting with António Guterres - the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and more than 20 other celebrities and opinion leaders signed an open letter, published in The Guardian, saying it is time to put an end to statelessness, 60 years after the United Nations first agreed to grant protection to stateless persons.
“Statelessness can mean a life without education, without medical care or legal employment… a life without the ability to move freely, without prospects or hope,” the Open Letter said, according to the UNHCR press release.
The open letter aims to collect ten million signatures to support the cause of statelessness eradication by 2024, through an online petition.
12 European countries have not signed the 1954 Convention on the status of stateless persons
Most cases of statelessness are the direct result of discrimination based on ethnical, religious or gender grounds. There are currently 27 countries which deny women the right to pass their nationality to their children on an equal basis with men, a situation that can create chains of statelessness over several generations. Until now 144 countries adhered to the two treaties on statelessness - the UN Convention of 1954 on the status of stateless persons and the Convention of 1961 on reducing cases of statelessness - making it possible to reach a critical mass in this line. In Europe there still are 12 countries who have not yet signed the Convention of 1954, while 29 countries have not ratified the Convention of 1961. The amendments to national legislation in Russia and Latvia helped prevent transmitting the stateless statute from a generation to another and reduced the number of stateless persons. Over the last years the Republic of Moldova, Georgia and the United Kingdom joined the growing number of European countries which implemented national mechanisms to identify and protect stateless people. However there are many persons who have not acquired any citizenship following the break of the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Those states should take additional legal and administrative steps to solve the situation. Although the Council of Europe has repeatedly requested appropriate measures, European Union states remain silent in this debate. In this line the European Union committed to put pressure on the non-signatory states to ratify the 1954 and 1961 Conventions.
New risks related to statelessness
UNHCR gives the example of the war in Syria, which not only forced millions of people to become internally displaced or refugees, but also contributes to exacerbating the risk of statelessness: about 51,000 Syrian children refugeed abroad were born since 2011, and more than 70% of them were not registered upon birth. Many of their fathers are reported missing as a result of the conflict, and as Syrian legislation allows only fathers to transmit citizenship to their children, most children may have difficulties proving their Syrian citizenship. UNHCR also made public a special Report on statelessness which highlights the impact of the phenomenon, and a Global Action Plan to end statelessness, aiming both to solve the major current crises and to ensure no child is born stateless in the future. "Statelessness makes people feel like their very existence is a crime," said Guterres. "We have a historic opportunity to end the scourge of statelessness within 10 years, and give back hope to millions of people. We cannot afford to fail this challenge."
Legal amendments on citizenship
Over the last years, legislative changes allowed more than four million stateless people to acquire a citizenship or to obtain confirmation of a citizenship. For example, a 2008 High Court ruling in Bangladesh allowed 300,000 stateless Urdu speakers to become citizens, ending generations of despair. In Côte d'Ivoire, where statelessness was a root cause of a decade of armed conflict, legal reforms in 2013 allowed long-term residents in the country to finally acquire a nationality. In Kyrgyzstan, more than 65,000 former Soviet citizens have acquired or confirmed their Kyrgyz citizenship since 2009.
Source:
http://www.unhcr-centraleurope.org/ro/stiri/2014/unhcr-lanseaza-campania-globala-de-eradicare-a-apatridiei-pana-in-2024.html
About ten million people worldwide are currently stateless. According to UNHCR statistics, a stateless child is born every ten minutes.
Online petition to put an end to statelessness
Lacking citizenship people do not generally have access to the rights and services which states provide to their citizens. According to UNHCR, statelessness is a legal calvary with devastating effects upon millions of people worldwide who lack a citizenship and do not benefit from the associated human rights protection. UNHCR representatives, starting with António Guterres - the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and more than 20 other celebrities and opinion leaders signed an open letter, published in The Guardian, saying it is time to put an end to statelessness, 60 years after the United Nations first agreed to grant protection to stateless persons.
“Statelessness can mean a life without education, without medical care or legal employment… a life without the ability to move freely, without prospects or hope,” the Open Letter said, according to the UNHCR press release.
The open letter aims to collect ten million signatures to support the cause of statelessness eradication by 2024, through an online petition.
12 European countries have not signed the 1954 Convention on the status of stateless persons
Most cases of statelessness are the direct result of discrimination based on ethnical, religious or gender grounds. There are currently 27 countries which deny women the right to pass their nationality to their children on an equal basis with men, a situation that can create chains of statelessness over several generations. Until now 144 countries adhered to the two treaties on statelessness - the UN Convention of 1954 on the status of stateless persons and the Convention of 1961 on reducing cases of statelessness - making it possible to reach a critical mass in this line. In Europe there still are 12 countries who have not yet signed the Convention of 1954, while 29 countries have not ratified the Convention of 1961. The amendments to national legislation in Russia and Latvia helped prevent transmitting the stateless statute from a generation to another and reduced the number of stateless persons. Over the last years the Republic of Moldova, Georgia and the United Kingdom joined the growing number of European countries which implemented national mechanisms to identify and protect stateless people. However there are many persons who have not acquired any citizenship following the break of the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Those states should take additional legal and administrative steps to solve the situation. Although the Council of Europe has repeatedly requested appropriate measures, European Union states remain silent in this debate. In this line the European Union committed to put pressure on the non-signatory states to ratify the 1954 and 1961 Conventions.
New risks related to statelessness
UNHCR gives the example of the war in Syria, which not only forced millions of people to become internally displaced or refugees, but also contributes to exacerbating the risk of statelessness: about 51,000 Syrian children refugeed abroad were born since 2011, and more than 70% of them were not registered upon birth. Many of their fathers are reported missing as a result of the conflict, and as Syrian legislation allows only fathers to transmit citizenship to their children, most children may have difficulties proving their Syrian citizenship. UNHCR also made public a special Report on statelessness which highlights the impact of the phenomenon, and a Global Action Plan to end statelessness, aiming both to solve the major current crises and to ensure no child is born stateless in the future. "Statelessness makes people feel like their very existence is a crime," said Guterres. "We have a historic opportunity to end the scourge of statelessness within 10 years, and give back hope to millions of people. We cannot afford to fail this challenge."
Legal amendments on citizenship
Over the last years, legislative changes allowed more than four million stateless people to acquire a citizenship or to obtain confirmation of a citizenship. For example, a 2008 High Court ruling in Bangladesh allowed 300,000 stateless Urdu speakers to become citizens, ending generations of despair. In Côte d'Ivoire, where statelessness was a root cause of a decade of armed conflict, legal reforms in 2013 allowed long-term residents in the country to finally acquire a nationality. In Kyrgyzstan, more than 65,000 former Soviet citizens have acquired or confirmed their Kyrgyz citizenship since 2009.
Source:
http://www.unhcr-centraleurope.org/ro/stiri/2014/unhcr-lanseaza-campania-globala-de-eradicare-a-apatridiei-pana-in-2024.html
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