Twelve million stateless people living in the world, according to a new report of the High Commissioner for Refugees living without legal status, they can enjoy human rights as citizens.
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مليون “بدون” في العالم حسب مفوضية اللاجئين
اثنا عشر مليون شخص يعيشون بلا جنسية في العالم, وهولاء بحسب تقرير جديد للمفوضية العليا لشؤون اللاجئين يعيشون بلا وضع قانوني يمكنهم من التمتع بالحقوق الانسانية كمواطنين.
UNHCR estimates that about 12 million people are stateless in dozens of developed and developing countries around the world, though the exact numbers are not known. They are to be found in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe and have been a group of concern to UNHCR since its founding.
Exclusionary policies are at the root of many statelessness situations. In the Middle East and other parts of the world gender-discriminatory legislation continues to create risks of statelessness. In many of the Gulf States, populations who were left out at independence are now referred to as Bidoon, literally “without” in Arabic. Under the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, many Feili Kurds were stripped of their nationality, but this decree was repealed in 2006.
In Africa, some of the Nubian people do not enjoy citizenship rights in Kenya. And across the continent, lack of clarity on their nationality status affects large numbers of people in Côte d’Ivoire. In Europe, the break-up of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Federation in the 1990s led to statelessness in the new countries that emerged. The problem of state succession in both cases was compounded by large population and refugee movements. Efforts to naturalize these people and to issue nationality documentation are under way, but the situations are not yet fully resolved.
Statelessness is also an issue of UNHCR concern in the Caribbean.
There have been some success stories in recent years in Asia, where millions have received nationality in Bangladesh and Nepal. But even though Nepal achieved in 2007 the largest reduction of statelessness the world has seen, the Himalayan nation still hosts about 800,000 people whose nationality is not confirmed and who cannot access important government services without a citizenship certificate.
Nationality is a legal bond between a state and an individual, and statelessness refers to the condition of an individual who is not considered as a national by any state. Although stateless people may sometimes also be refugees, the two categories are distinct and both groups are of concern to UNHCR.
Statelessness occurs for a variety of reasons including discrimination against minority groups in nationality legislation, failure to include all residents in the body of citizens when a state becomes independent (state succession) and conflicts of laws between states.
Statelessness is a massive problem that affects an estimated 12 million people worldwide. Statelessness also has a terrible impact on the lives of individuals. Possession of nationality is essential for full participation in society and a prerequisite for the enjoyment of the full range of human rights.
While human rights are generally to be enjoyed by everyone, selected rights such as the right to vote may be limited to nationals. Of even greater concern is that many more rights of stateless people are violated in practice – they are often unable to obtain identity documents; they may be detained because they are stateless; and they could be denied access to education and health services or blocked from obtaining employment.
Given the seriousness of the problem, the UN in 1954 adopted the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.
Yet the problem can be prevented through adequate nationality legislation and procedures as well as universal birth registration. UNHCR has been given a mandate to work with governments to prevent statelessness from occurring, to resolve those cases that do occur and to protect the rights of stateless persons. A first step is for states to ratify and implement the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c15e.html
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