WUNRN
Please see 3 parts of this WUNRN
release on Statelessness - Gender.
Office of the UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights - OHCHR
UN - COOPERATIVE EFFORT TO PROTECT
THE HUMAN
RIGHTS OF STATELESS PERSONS - WOMEN
& CHILDREN
The problem of statelessness is global. Figures are imprecise but it is estimated that there are millions of people who do not have legal identities. In the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) there are several large stateless populations, including several hundred thousand Bidoon in the Gulf region, more than 200,000 stateless Kurds in Syria and Lebanon and millions of Palestinians still waiting for a State of their own.
Earlier this year, during a visit to the Gulf region, Human Rights chief Navi Pillay spoke of the precarious lives of the Bidoon population. “As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, everyone has a right to a nationality and to a legal personality, without which a person in fact does not exist before the law. The Bidoon have neither. Without documentation and citizenship, they often endure marginalization, prejudice and exclusion,” she said.
Speaking at an expert meeting co-organized by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Amman, Fateh Azzam from the UN Human Rights office said, “The right to a nationality should be enjoyed by all in implementation of the right to self-determination and to resolve long-standing historical and political conflicts. However, even as we wait for states to have the courage and the political will to act, stateless persons must be guaranteed the full range of human rights…”
At the meeting participants heard of the many rights that are denied the stateless. Their access to a family life may be impossible because of the difficulties in registering births and marriages and because of physical separations resulting from detention, deportation or refusal to allow individuals who are stateless to return to their usual place of residence. Stateless persons often have little or no access to employment, education and healthcare. Children who are stateless may be given primary schooling but not be permitted to take official examinations, which prevents further education.
The cooperative process between OHCHR and UNHCR will be based primarily on a two-tiered approach: the prevention and reduction of statelessness and protecting the human rights of those without nationality or legal identity.
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WUNRN
Open Society Institute
Statelessness - Video - Facts
A stateless person is not recognized
as a citizen by any state. Citizenship enables you not only to vote, hold
public office, and exit and enter a country freely, but also to obtain housing,
health care, employment, and education. It is vital in order to live a decent
human life. Stateless people are denied that right.
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----- Original Message -----
From: WUNRN
ListServe
To: WUNRN ListServe
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2009 1:28 PM
Subject: Statelessness of Children - Report - The Girl Child
WUNRN
DIRECT LINK TO FULL 32-PAGE REPORT:
"Statelessness, or the lack of
effective nationality, impacts the daily lives of some 11-12 million people
around the world. Perhaps those who suffer most are stateless infants, children
and youth. Though born and raised in their parents' country of habitual
residence, they lack formal recognition of their existence........The goal of
this report, which is dedicated to the promise and potential of all children,
is increased recognition of every child's right to a nationality and the
actions that can be taken to give them a brighter future......When state
systems linked to registration are destroyed during conflict or disasters,
people may lose access to their birth records and citizenship documents.
Families who leave homes and possessions during political crises may flee without
identification or lose proof of citizenship. It can also be difficult for
children to acquire their parents' nationality when refugee mothers give birth
outside their home countries. In addition, 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......Unlike refugees, stateless children receive neither
international recognition nor aid, and they don't have the option of returning
to a country of origin like migrants do."
