Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 23:28:52 +0200
UN global stateless forum calls for rights for 10 million ‘invisible people’
Syrian war has swelled number without identity papers as thousands of
undocumented children are born in refugee camps
* Annie Kelly <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/anniekelly> at The
Hague
* Monday 15 September 2014 17.46 BST
Tens of thousands of children are being born stateless every year, not
recognised as citizens of a country and without birth or registration
documents, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).
Opening the
<https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/s
tatelessness/news/forum/> first global forum on statelessness at The Hague
on Monday, UNHCR’s director of international protection, Volker Türk, said
that despite advances in promoting the rights of the stateless people, an
estimated 10 million still live as “invisible people”, without legal
identities and not recognised by any nation state.
“There is something deeply unethical about perpetuating human suffering
through statelessness, especially when solutions are within our reach,” he
said.
Türk said stateless people are often denied the rights that most people take
for granted, such as access to education, healthcare, the ability to legally
work or travel freely. Without identity documents or legal status, they
simply “fall through the gaps in society”.
“It is difficult to imagine that there are individuals in today’s world whom
no state recognises as its citizen,” he said. “Simply put, it is morally
untenable to allow statelessness, and the needless suffering it inflicts, to
exist.”
But he said UNHCR believed statelessness could be ended by 2024, and
highlighted the fact that 4 million formerly stateless people have been
granted citizenship in the past 10 years. However, a failure to deal with
the number of people that continue to be rendered stateless could lead to
“havoc” and contribute to the refugee crisis.
“Statelessness is often a direct result of persecution, discrimination or
violence and can fuel displacement, insecurity and civil war,” he said. “For
most of us, it is simply inconceivable to be without a nationality, yet many
children are being born unregistered and stateless every year across the
world and the future for these children could be very grim indeed unless we
all act to stop this.”
The UNHCR believes that up to 50,000 undocumented babies, mainly the
children of Syrian refugees, have been born in Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and
Jordan over the past three years. According to the Council of Europe,
thousands of stateless children have been born in refugee camps in Turkey in
the past year.
“In a European context, people becoming stateless is something that has
traditionally been linked with the breakdown of the USSR, but what we’re
seeing now is new crisis points where statelessness is becoming a
characteristic of people who are fleeing violence and instability who are
desperate to find sanctuary wherever they can, and it is a situation that
European countries have to face up to,” said Nils Muiznieks, commissioner
for human rights at the <http://hub.coe.int/> Council of Europe.
The UNHCR will launch a global campaign to end statelessness on 4 November
to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the
<http://www.unhcr.org/3bbb25729.html> 1954 Convention Relating to the Status
of Stateless Persons.
“What is clear is that we do have the instruments and the knowledge to end
statelessness, and there has been very good progress in recent years,” said
Türk. He <http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR32/30-31.pdf> pointed to
Bangladesh (pdf), which in 2008 formally recognised thousands of stateless
Urdu-speaking Biharis.
Yet he acknowledged there is still a long way to go. In 27 countries,
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jun/20/womens-nationalit
y-focus-campaign-gender-equality> women still cannot pass nationality to
their children. In Nepal, hundreds of thousands of people are believed to be
stateless. More than 500,000 people, mostly from ethnic hill tribes, are not
recognised as citizens by the state in Thailand and are denied ID cards and
access to state services. In Russia, an estimated 178,000 people are
stateless.
Syrian refugee children stattelessSyrian refugee children play at a refugee
camp at the Syrian-Turkish border near Azaz. Thousands of undocumented
children have been born at refugee camps. Photograph: Maysun/EPA
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)