WUNRN
Presentation
by Ada Williams Prince, Women's Refugee Commission - http://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/
To:
NY NGO Committee on Migration, the NGO Committee on the Status of Women and the
NGO Committee on the Family.
GENDER ASPECTS OF STATELESSNESS
I am very happy to be here with you to commemorate
International Migrants Day 2009 and bring awareness to these issues.
Particularly I’m honored to be on a panel with such distinguished and
knowledgeable presenters who are dedicated to The Protection and Empowerment of
Stateless Persons.
I am here representing The Women's Refugee Commission.
For the past 20 years we’ve advocated vigorously for laws, policies and
programs to improve the lives and protect the rights of refugee, internally
displaced and asylum seeking women, children and young people.
I will
focus my comments on the specific circumstances of stateless persons who are
also refugee women and girls. In particular, I’ll talk about Forced Migrants, Displaced and Refugee
Women at risk
Statelessness, or the lack of effective nationality,
impacts the daily lives of some 11-12 million people around the world. Although
the exact numbers are not known, it is estimated that half of these people are
women. All displaced women and girls face extreme levels of risk to their
safety and well being. This is exacerbated when Women and Girls become
stateless.
How do women become
stateless?
This can be as a result of political change or when
states deliberately write laws excluding
minority groups from citizenship, such as in the
Gender discrimination is another crucial factor in
statelessness. Gender discrimination in nationality means that a woman can lose
her right to citizenship by virtue of marriage because she has to denounce her
nationality when she gets married. And Women often cannot pass on their
citizenship to their children.
Other ways of becoming stateless: People may lose access
to their birth records and citizenship documents when the state systems linked
to registration and citizenship are destroyed
during conflict or disasters. Also, families forced to flee their homes and
leave their possessions during conflict and natural disasters may leave without
identification, or lose proof of citizenship documents, or have them stolen.
As a result of being stateless, refugee women and girls
are also frequently unable to obtain passports, to travel freely, or acquire
jobs in the formal sector. This puts them at risk of using smugglers to remove
themselves from difficult situations or in hopes of supporting themselves and
their families.
But, there are some solutions to these problems. For
example, it is important that refugees receive individual ID cards, that
women’s names appear on ration cards, and that births, marriages and deaths are
registered. This kind of documentation and registration has an impact on
refugee return, nationality and inheritance. For example, having an individual
identity card can help facilitate movement, stop the use of detention and offer
protection against refoulement.
Statelessness has innumerable consequences on children, particularly girls. Those who suffer most are stateless infants, children and youth. Though born and raised in their parents’ country of residence, they lack formal recognition of their existence.
First, refugee mothers give birth outside their
home countries and in most cases cannot pass on their nationality to their
children. Countries that determine citizenship exclusively by the father’s
nationality create problems for children born out of wedlock, separated from
their fathers, or whose fathers are stateless.
Second, Birth registration establishes a child’s legal identity and the state’s responsibility for that child. But without a permanent identity, children have limited access to health care and to primary education; and are almost universally restricted from receiving public secondary education. As a result, many young people are forced to do unskilled labor such as trash picking to survive. Currently 51 million children per year are not registered at birth.
Third, Statelessness may lead to forced or early marriage, harassment, sexual and physical violence, and trafficking. Traffickers of stateless children cannot be taken to court when children are without proper documents that prove their age or resident status.
Two specific Examples
I’d like to start by talking about
In the eyes of the Malaysian government,
there is no difference between an undocumented worker and a refugee. As
These refugee and stateless women face
immense challenges. While they desperately need to work, without legal
protection and legal status they are extremely vulnerable to violence and
exploitation by employers who are able to act with impunity because the women
face deportation if they go to the police.
Merely leaving the house to go to work puts
women at great risk of arrest and attack. Not working at all increases women’s
dependency on community members, spouses and neighbors. This also increases
their risk of abuse.
The complexity of their situation makes it
very challenging for UNHCR and other refugee advocates to provide sufficient
protection and assistance.
Let me give you an example. One stateless girl from northern
Let us turn now to
The Himalayan nation hosts about 800,000 people whose
nationality is not confirmed and who cannot access important government
services without a citizenship certificate.
Some key causes of statelessness for Bhutanese in
Key issues
50% of the Bhutanese refugee population in
Women must get up early and search for firewood both for
cooking and for selling as a means of earning a living. As they venture out of
the relative safety of the camps to collect firewood they are often attacked
along the way, beaten or sexually assaulted.
RRefugees in
Women are extremely dependent on men, and when abused
they have no recourse, or access to resources on their own.
25,000 refugees from
I’d like to outline some key actions that can be taken
now to protect stateless women, children and youth around the world:
·
To protect children, ensure that every child is registered at
birth, identify cases of disputed nationality and grant citizenship when a
child would otherwise be stateless.
· To protect women, disseminate the new Inter-agency
Standing Committee guidelines on fuel strategies (which provide fuel and
alternatives and help determine agency roles and responsibilities). This will
help stop women from being attacked when they collect firewood, as well as help
provide for more effective livelihood interventions.
· To protect women, undertake a series of
awareness campaigns to ensure they obtain citizenship certificates or other
documentation and support to help anyone who wishes to do so.
· I’ve brought with me today several copies of our Refugee Girls Book, and our report on which you may find interesting.
Refugee Girls - The
Invisible Faces of War - 48 pages:
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