The strange, hidden world of the stateless

S P E C I A L R E P O R T

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New twistto a sad tale

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T H E E D I T O R ’ S D E S K

There are strong fears that some small

island states will soon start disappearing altogetheras a result of climate change. Among those consid-ered particularly vulnerable are Kiribati, Vanuatu,

the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, the Maldives and the Bahamas. High tides are already destroying homes, gardens and

fresh water supplies on Papua New Guinea’s Carteret Islands,which may vanish completely beneath the waves as early as2015. An evacuation of the Carterets’ 2,000 inhabitants to an-other part of Papua New Guinea hasbegun.

If low-lying island states such asKiribati (population 93,000) and Tu-valu (population 10,000) follow suit,their problems will be much morecomplex than simply packing up andmoving somewhere else. All the insti-tutions of a modern nation state – parliaments, police, law courts, stateeducation and healthcare – will havedisappeared along with the coral atolls,sandy beaches and palm trees.

The islanders will either have tofind a way to reconstitute their van-ished state elsewhere, or they will haveto find another state to adopt them ascitizens, give them a passport and pro-vide them with all the other forms ofprotection and assistance that a stateexists to give its people. Alternativelythey will become stateless – about asstateless as you can possibly be.

A 2005 working paper submitted tothe un Commission on Human Rights framed the dilemmasuccinctly: “Whilst States […] are used to addressing issues ofState succession, it would appear that the extinction of aState, without there being a successor, is unprecedented…”The paper then outlined a long list of awkward questionsthat would arise in such a scenario, most of them concerningthe rights of the affected population, and who would be re-sponsible for ensuring those rights were observed.

It will be scant consolation – but, in the event of a statesinking, its inhabitants will not be alone. unhcr (which has amandate for stateless people as well as for refugees) currently has an official figure of 5.8 million stateless peoplespread across 49 countries. However, the agency believes the

true total may be closer to 15 million. Some people end up stateless because of legislative or

bureaucratic accidents – not necessarily because someonehas deliberately deprived them of their national identity.Even if no state has sunk yet, millions have become statelessbecause the state in which they or their ancestors were bornhas changed shape in some abstract way: been created or di-vided or dissolved, decolonized, conquered or freed.

Whenever a state is modified in some such fundamentalway, the issue of who is – and who isnot – a citizen comes to the fore. Thosewho fall through the cracks duringthis process often have nowhere else togo. Powerless to alter their situation,they are often pushed by thebureaucratic tide to the margins ofsociety, where they stay vulnerable,impoverished and all too easy toignore.

Others become stateless as an unforeseen consequence of a change in domestic legislation, or because ofan incompatibility between the laws oftwo different states. And a sizeableminority are the victims of a morepernicious form of statelessness: thedeliberate exclusion of entire groupsbecause of some political, religious orethnic discrimination.

But there are some currents of freshair blowing through the strange, sadworld of the stateless. There have beenrecent political and legislative

breakthroughs for large groups of stateless people in SriLanka, Thailand, Nepal, and some Gulf States. Graduallymore governments are realizing that burying their heads inthe sand when it comes to groups of stateless people on theirterritory is no solution.

If this trend continues, it may just be that by the time thefirst island state is submerged, its erstwhile inhabitants willfind a world more inclined to take the necessary steps to prevent them from being forced into the shadowy globalghetto of the stateless. Arresting climate change will be a Herculean task. But preventing this particular side effectshould not be beyond the collective capability of theinternational community.

Tuvalu: one of the island nations mostthreatened by climate change.

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EditorRupert Colville

French EditorCécile Pouilly

ContributorsGreg Constantine, Keith Delaney, BetsyGreve, Nanda Na Champassak, GisèleNyembwe, Barbara Porteous and unhcr

staff worldwide.

Editorial AssistantManuela Raffoni

Photo DepartmentSuzy Hopper, Anne Kellner

DesignVincent Winter Associés, Paris

ProductionFrançoise Jaccoud

DistributionJohn O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot

Photo EngravingAloha Scan, Geneva

Mapsunhcr Mapping Unit

Historical documentsunhcr archives

REFUGEES is published by the MediaRelations and Public Information Service ofthe United Nations High Commissioner forRefugees. The opinions expressed bycontributors are not necessarily those ofunhcr. The designations and maps used donot imply the expression of any opinion orrecognition on the part of unhcr

concerning the legal status of a territory orof its authorities.

REFUGEES reserves the right to edit all articlesbefore publication. Articles and photos notcovered by copyright © may be reprintedwithout prior permission. Please creditunhcr and the photographer. Requests forcopyrighted photos should be directed to theagency credited.

English and French editions printed in Italyby amilcare pizzi S.p.A., Milan.Circulation: 111,000 in English, French,Italian and Spanish.

ISSN 0252-791 X

Front cover: Stateless Muslims fromNorthern Rakhine State in Myanmar (alsoknown as Rohingyas) living in Bangladesh.U N H C R / G . M . B . A K A S H / B G D • 2 0 0 6

Back cover: The hands of a 75-year-oldstateless woman labourer in a Sri Lankan tea plantation.U N H C R / G . A M A R A S I N G H E / L K A • 2 0 0 7

UNHCR

P.O. Box 25001211 Geneva 2, Switzerlandwww.unhcr.org

4Stateless people often live on the margins of society : vulnerable, impoverished and all too easy to ignore.

16 N E P A L M O V E S M O U N T A I N S

A massive government campaign in Nepal has regularized the citizenship status of 2.6 million people.

18 S T A T E L E S S A C H I E V E R S

A film-maker, physicist, writer and cello playerwho all rose to the top, despite being stateless.

20 S R I L A N K A N S U C C E S S S T O R Y

Sri Lanka has granted citizenship to 190,000Tamil tea-pickers whose ancestors wereimported by the British two centuries ago.

24 S O R R Y , W R O N G G E N D E R

In some countries, a mother cannot pass on her nationality to her children – only the father can.

26 N O H U S B A N D , N O C O U N T R Y

For Vietnamese women who marry foreigners,losing your husband may also mean losingyour country.

28 A F R I C A ’ S H I D D E N P R O B L E M

Colonial legacies, political manipulation andenvironmental factors are all contributing to a rise in statelessness in Africa.

30 S U D D E N L Y Y O U A R E N O B O D Y

A Zimbabwean newspaper publisher leads a campaign against statelessness.

C O V E R S T O R Y

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4Stateless people areborn, or created bymistake, every day.

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20Naturalizationmeans newopportunities for Sri

Lanka’s stateless tea-pickers.

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28Statelessness hashad a destabilizingeffect in several

African countries.

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Millions seek to escape the grim world of the stateless

Some stateless people –like these ones in a campin Bangladesh – are alsorefugees. But most are not.U

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“To be stripped of citizenship is to be stripped of worldliness; it is like returning to a wilderness as cavemen or savages . . .they could live and diewithout leaving any trace.”

—HANNAH ARENDT

“The Origins of Totalitarianism”

B Y P H I L I P P E L E C L E R CA N D R U P E R T C O L V I L L E

Unlike the philosopher

Hannah Arendt (who wasstateless for 16 years but stillhad an immensely successful

career), most stateless people are – almostby definition – anonymous. People wholive in the shadows at the edge of society.People with no chance of a career at all.

Stateless people can be found in allthe corners of the planet – in developed aswell as developing countries. And thereare many ways to become stateless. Someare stateless because of actions taken longago, and other stateless people are beingborn – or created by mistake – every day.

STRIPPED OF THEIR RIGHTSSome people – like Hannah Arendt,

who lost her German citizenship afterfleeing the Nazis in 1933, or the Feili Kurdswho were expelled from Saddam Hussein’sIraq – become stateless as a result of offi-cial decrees deliberately aimed at ex-cluding them from any meaningful rolein society, or at driving them out of thecountry, or (in the case of Europe’s Jews inthe Nazi era) as a prelude to an attempt toexterminate them altogether.

Perversely, on occasion it can even bethe development of democracy that stim-ulates the omission of a particular groupfrom the list of nationals – because of thefear of those in charge that the group inquestion, or some prominent individuals

R E F U G E E S6

effects of badly designed laws, poor birth registrationsystems, other administrative oversights, or simplybecause of a clash of different legislations in differentstates.

The results for the people concerned are often shat-tering. Through no fault of their own, some people –including the 24 year-old woman whose desperateplea from her detention cell is shown on the left –may end up losing their liberty because their parents infringed immigration rules when theywere a small child. They may then stay locked upfor an indefinite period because there is no statethat accepts them as citizens.

Sometimes children are born stateless, andstay stateless all their lives. As such, they maybe unable to go to school or university, worklegally, own property, get married, or travel.They may find it difficult to enter hospital, im-possible to open a bank account, and have nochance of receiving a pension.

If someone robs them or rapes them,they may find they cannot lodge a com-plaint, because legally they do not exist,and the police require proof that they do before they can open an investiga-tion. They are extremely vulnerable toexploitation as cheap or bonded labour,especially in societies where they can-not work legally.

Then, as if all that were not enough,many stateless people are condemnedto pass on their statelessness to theirown children – as if it were some sort

of genetic disease.At one end of the spectrum, some groups of state-

less people are able to exercise most of their basic rights – for example half a million people belongingto Russian-speaking minorities in Latvia and Estonia, who are nevertheless still deprived of theirdemocratic right to vote.

But for many stateless people around the world,it is a corrosive, soul-destroying condition that coloursalmost every aspect of their lives.

A stateless woman called Chen, who once foundherself stuck in no-man’s land between two of her possible countries of nationality, describes what itfeels like.

“Being said ‘No’ to by the country where I live; being said ‘No’ to by the country where I was born; being said ‘No’ to by the country where my parentsare from. I feel I am nobody and don’t even knowwhy I’m living. Being stateless, you are always sur-rounded by a sense of worthlessness.”

among them, willside with the political opposition.

Groups who, for one reason or another, were leftout of the body of recognized citizens when their statewas first constituted, or reformed, include the Mus-lims of Northern Rakhine State in Myanmar (alsoknown as Rohingyas); some hill tribes in Thailand;the Bidoon in the Gulf States; the Lhotshampas fromBhutan, the Madhesis in Nepal and various no-madic groups around the world.

And then, of course, there are the Palestinians,many of whom became stateless refugees duringthe tumultuous upheaval surrounding the creationof the state of Israel in 1948.

KAFKAESQUEOther people do not have (or lose) their

nationality, because of the unintentional side-

By 1969, HannahArendt had becomea US citizen.

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REJECTED BY HISTORYTh e r e a r e h u n d r e d s o f t h o u sa n d s o f

people who remain stateless today because of someupheaval in a country that has changed political shape,or because they fell into a black hole created by anexpiring empire.

Groups who became stateless after the dissolutionof the Ottoman Empire, for example, include someof the Kurdish populations who moved to Syriafrom other parts of the empire.

When Syria carried out a census in 1962, some300,000 Kurds were left without any nationality. Incertain instances, some members of a family receivedcitizenship while others did not (with the latter re-maining stateless ever since).

Such groups may gain some hope from develop-ments in Sri Lanka where, thanks to a new law passedin 2003 (almost two centuries after they were firstbrought over from British India), hundreds of thou-sands of Hill Tamils can now obtain citizenshipthrough a simple declaration.

And an even more impressive breakthrough hasrecently taken place in Nepal where, as a welcomeby-product of the peace process, a remarkable 2.6 mil-lion previously stateless individuals were issued withcitizenship certificates in just four months in early2007.

(Opposite) Letterfrom a statelesswoman detainedin the countrywhere she hasspent the last nineyears, because her parentsallegedly infringedimmigration ruleswhen she was achild.

(Left) Many of the100,000 Nubians,brought fromSudan to Kenya bythe British duringthe colonial eralive in the Nairobislum of Kibera.They have neverbeen fullyrecognized asKenyan citizens.

Who are the stateless?The term ‘stateless person’ meanssomeone who is not considered as anational, according to domestic legis-lation, by ANY state (also known as dejure stateless). A second, loosely de-fined category is considered de factostateless because they do not enjoythe rights generally enjoyed by nation-als (for example their country will notgrant them a passport or allow themto return) or because they are unableto prove their nationality.

What is nationality or citizenship?The terms are not necessarily synony-mous. However both are used by differ-ent countries to describe the ‘legalbond’ that binds together a state andthe individual. It covers political, socialand economic rights, as well as the responsibilities, of both governmentand citizen.

How is nationality granted?Usually through the recorded birth ona country’s territory, descent from an-other citizen or naturalization follow-ing marriage to one. Naturalization canalso be granted after residence for aset length of time, or for other specificreasons. The rules vary from state tostate – and the variations themselvesare often the cause of statelessness.

Are refugees stateless?They can be de jure stateless, but mostare not. Groups, or individuals, aresometimes stripped of their nationalityas part of the process of persecution,and then flee as refugees. Or, con-versely, they are punished for fleeing byhaving their nationality removed. Butmany stateless people do not face per-secution, and many refugees retaintheir nationality throughout their or-deal abroad.

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y caN stimulate the omissioN of certaiN groups

from the list of citizeNs.

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S Y R I A N A R A B R E P.

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Note: Few States have reliablestatistics relating to statelesspeople. At the end of 2006,UNHCR was able to report 5.8 million stateless peoplehaving difficulty establishingnationality in a total of 49 States. However, the agencybelieves the true total may becloser to 15 million. Statelesspopulations which are alsoclassified as refugees are notfeatured on this map.

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54,000

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K E N YA

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N E PA L *

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States with a known statelesspopulation of more than 10,000.

States that host sizeablepopulations at risk of statelessness,for which no reliable estimates areavailable.

* The total for Nepal has shrunkconsiderably during 2007, as aresult of a massive regularizationexercise.

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ChasiNg the propiska

CHANGING STATESStat e s c o n t i n u e t o c h a n g e s h a p e a n d

continue to make certain groups stateless in theprocess.

Perhaps the most spectacular example in recentyears was the break up of a single state – the ussr –into 15 separate successor states. In December 1991,Soviet citizenship ceased to exist, leaving 287 millionpeople in need of a new identity.

As a result of this unprecedented political earth-quake, an estimated 54-65 million people suddenlyfound themselves living “abroad.” Many were even-tually able to sort out their situation, but some withlinks to two states found themselves citizens of nei-ther, including many ethnic Russians, Ukrainiansand Belarusians living in Central Asia and the Baltics(see story above).

B Y V I V I A N T A N

Alexei Martinov has spent half his lifebouncing around Central Asia insearch of a country that would

accept him. Today, 16 years after he firstbecame stateless, he is hoping against hopefor a chance to start a new life with his twochildren in an ancestral homeland he hasnever known.

Martinov is one of many people who fellthrough the legislative cracks after the SovietUnion disintegrated in 1991, and his odysseythrough five countries typifies the complexchain of bureaucratic cause and effect thatlies behind so many of the stateless situationsin the post-Soviet era. Many of these, initiallyat least, revolved around the propiska, the all-important residence permit, which everySoviet citizen had to have and which wasdesigned to control internal populationmovement in the USSR.

Alexei Martinov, now aged 35, is the sonof ethnic Russian parents, who lived ineastern Uzbekistan, then part of the Union ofSoviet Socialist Republics. In 1990, he wentto study in Ukraine with the support of hiskolkhoz, or commune. His propiska wastransferred from Uzbekistan to Ukraine.

The following year, he returned to

Uzbekistan to get money to cover the secondpart of his education. All of a sudden, as a re-sult of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the19-year-old Martinov’s world was turned up-side down. In the newly independentUzbekistan, previous agreements with theSoviet kolkhoz were declared no longer valid.Meanwhile back in Ukraine – now a foreigncountry – his institute refused to transfer hispropiska back to Uzbekistan, apparently be-cause he had some unpaid bills.

This was just the beginning, as a multi-national bureaucratic nightmare began to un-fold, affecting Martinov and millions of otherslike him all across the former Soviet Union.

“It was a time of ethnic clashes and anti-Russian feelings in Uzbekistan,” Martinovrecalled. “My parents’ home was burned, andthey decided to flee to Turkmenistan. Usingmy old Soviet passport, I went to Kazakhstanto join my wife’s family.”

The couple moved in with his father-in-law, but were unable to get a Kazakhpropiska – an essential prerequisite for legalemployment, as well as for basic servicessuch as healthcare. A few years later, theymoved to Turkmenistan, where his ownfamily was now living.

His father had died while he was inKazakhstan, and his widowed mother and his

sister had both married locals and receivedTurkmen citizenship (Turkmenistan has alsonaturalized around 10,000 stateless refugeeswho fled from Tajikistan in the early 1990s).

Martinov applied for citizenship too, butwas rejected. So, once again, no propiska.Frustrated, his wife finally gave up andreturned to her own family, leaving him andtheir two young children behind.

In December 2006, Martinov and thechildren were deported by train toUzbekistan. “I did not want to go backbecause I had nothing left there and [ethnic]Russians were not treated well,” he said. “Theborder guards in Uzbekistan said thedeportation order did not meet internationalstandards and that Turkmenistan should haveverified my Uzbek citizenship beforedeporting me. There was a lot of shouting andno one wanted to listen to me.”

Denied entry to Uzbekistan, the countrywhere he had spent all his childhood, thestateless father and his two stateless childrenwere forced to stay on the train until itreached the end of the line in Khujand inTajikistan (the fourth of five Central Asianstates where he has now lived, but not beenaccepted). “We were all very tired from thetrip and just wanted to get off,” he said. “TheTajik border guards did not know what to do

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The subsequent upheavals in Central and EasternEurope, and splitting up of states such as Yugoslaviaand Czechoslovakia, also led to the emergence of newstateless groups – particularly among the Roma andother minorities.

For example, several thousand people in the world’smost recent new state – Montenegro (which becameindependent of Serbia in 2006) – are believed to be atrisk of statelessness because of complications linkedto the Kosovo crisis.

Another post-Yugoslav legislative quirk snaredseveral thousand people in Slovenia who were re-moved from the country’s registry of residents in 1992,and either were not aware of, or failed to take advan-tage of, a short period of grace when they could haveapplied for citizenship of the new state of Slovenia.They have become known as “the erased cases.”

THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSEBetween the two World Wars, there were

a number of efforts to codify responses to stateless-ness in specific situations (for example for the Ar-menians and other minorities from the Ottoman em-pire, and for the so-called White Russians who fledto Western Europe, China and North Africa after the1917 Russian revolution).

These early international agreements usuallyreferred to both refugees and the stateless. Ratherthan aiming to solve the problem of statelessness, suchagreements were geared more to practical matterssuch as enabling stateless people to use the famousNansen travel documents, also used by refugees.

As a result, a lot of people like Hannah Arendt re-mained stateless for many years, but were not neces-sarily totally trapped by their condition in the way they

with us. They called Security who took us tothe OSCE [Organisation for Security andCooperation in Europe].”

The family was eventually given a freeroom at a local centre for disabled people,where they were still living in June 2007. Theyreceive three hot meals a day and 40 Tajiksomoni (about US$11) per month in financialassistance. The children, aged 10 and 15, attendthe local school while Martinov works at anearby carwash and workshop, earning about

five somoni for each car. “I’m very grateful tothe management because no one lets me payfor anything. I keep everything I earn, andthere are women and doctors to help with thechildren,” he said.

While his life has stabilized for the mo-ment, Martinov still lacks the documents nec-essary to lead a normal life.

His future may lie in the RussianFederation, thanks to a program for ethnicRussians, called the “Voluntary Resettlement

of Compatriots in The Russian Federation.”Tajikistan’s Migration Service is currently try-ing to verify his nationality – or lack of it –with the authorities in Uzbekistan, Ukraineand Turkmenistan, while the local humanrights centre is trying to help him get a state-lessness certificate, which is a prerequisite forsettlement in Russia.

It is perhaps the ultimate irony that even astatelessness certificate requires supportingdocuments.

Several hundredthousandCrimean Tatarswere renderedstateless whenreturning toUkraine afterthe dissolutionof the USSR.They have nowbeen naturalizedby Ukraine.

(Opposite)Feili Kurds, whowere stripped oftheir nationalityand expelledfrom Iraq duringthe 1980s,waiting to votefor the first timein their livesduring the 2005Iraqi elections,despiteremaining inexile in theIranian city ofQom.

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probably would be today. Ironically, in a supposedlymore globalized world, it can be more difficult for a stateless person to travel between countries nowadays than it was in the 1930s.

In 1949, with millions of refugees and stateless peo-ple still milling around a shattered Europe, the UnitedNations appointed a committee to “consider prepar-ing a revised and consolidated convention relatingto the international status of refugees and statelesspersons…” In the end, the work of the committee re-sulted in the drafting of two separate conventions: the1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees,and the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of State-less Persons.

The 1954 stateless convention provides a legal status for someone not considered as a national under the laws of any state. Seven years later, a second statelessness convention was added – the1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness –in an attempt to prevent or cure some of the root causes of statelessness.

The main problem with both conventions is thesmall number of states that have ratified them: 62 countries in the case of the 1954 Convention, and just33 in the case of the 1961 Convention.

Article 15 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to anationality – but it does not specify which state should

B Y K I T T Y M C K I N S E Y

Geneva Camp is by anystandards – eventhose of miserably

poor Bangladesh – a squalidslum. Though most of thehouses have solid brick walls,they are tiny and less than ametre apart. Outside theircrowded dwellings, womencook their families’ dinner overopen sewers, as toddlers playnearby on heaps of garbage.

However, the mosthumiliating blow is that simplyby admitting they live inGeneva Camp, residents are shut off fromthe basic rights citizens expect – going toschool and university, getting a driver’slicense or finding a decent job.

That is because the camp, set up by theInternational Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC) as a temporary site in 1971 and namedafter the agency’s Swiss headquarters, ishome to 18,000 of Bangladesh’s 300,000 defacto stateless Biharis – also known as‘stranded Pakistanis’ or the ‘Urdu-speakingminority.’ Once they give ghetto-like GenevaCamp as their address, residents say, theauthorities disavow them, despite the factthat a High Court ruling in 2003 appeared toclear the way for all Biharis in the country tobe considered citizens.

Mohammad Hasan, the 28-year-old

Secretary-General of the Association ofYoung Generation of Urdu-SpeakingCommunity, a group lobbying for full rights,recalls the plight of a Geneva Camp residentwho, against the odds, managed to get amaster’s degree.

“He applied to the forestry ministry,passed written and verbal exams and got aninterview card from the government,” Hasanrecalls. “But his background was investigatedand the police verification determined hewas living inside the camp, so he lost the job.”There’s only one way around the situation,Hasan adds: “Camp people can get a(Bangladeshi) passport or a driver’s license aslong as they give a fake address.”

The Biharis’ plight stems from theseparation of Pakistan. They, or their

ancestors, had come to whatwas then East Pakistan from1947 onwards after thepartition of India. Before,during and after the nine-month civil war in 1971 thatsaw East Pakistan becomeBangladesh, Biharis werekilled and had their propertylooted by angry mobs whoregarded them as traitors whohad sided with Pakistan – asituation inflamed by theactive participation of someBiharis in various notoriouslymurderous militias. By 1972there were more than one

million displaced Biharis living in settlementsall over Bangladesh awaiting “repatriation” toPakistan, despite the fact that most hadnever lived there.

Many did in fact move to Pakistan:around 178,000 in all benefited fromorganized repatriations between 1973 and1993 (when protests in Pakistan brought theprocess to a halt), while others managed tofind their own way there. The majority arereasonably well integrated in Pakistan’sbiggest city, Karachi, albeit mostly in veryimpoverished neighbourhoods such asOrangi Town.

In the 116 settlements that remain inBangladesh – like Geneva Camp – there arestill some members of the older generationwho long for “repatriation” (including

The Biharis of BaNgladesh

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R E F U G E E S 13

grant its nationality, nor in what circumstances.However, some key international treaties which havebeen ratified by most states – like the un Conventionon the Rights of the Child (crc) – lay down obliga-tions for states which, if applied, should preventstatelessness.

Article 7 of the crc says that states should sys-tematically register children at birth, and that they

should be provided with a nationality. Other inter-national instruments, such as the Covenant on Civiland Political Rights, as well as treaties tacklingracial discrimination and discrimination againstwomen, contain provisions designed to prevent thearbitrary deprivation, or denial, of nationality forindividuals.

The importance of registering births is graphically

members of families split between the twocountries). However younger people, such asHasan and his group, are increasingly fightingfor their rights within Bangladesh.

Khalid Hussain, president of the sameassociation, says “We believe we are notstateless. We consider ourselvesBangladeshis. The legal situation is veryclear.”

UNHCR agrees. “Urdu-speaking Biharis arecitizens of Bangladesh according to itsconstitution, nationality legislation and the2003 High Court verdict, which was not

challenged,” says the UN refugee agency’sRepresentative in Bangladesh, Pia Prytz Phiri.The agency is encouraging Bangladesh todeclare that Urdu-speaking Biharis arecitizens of the country, and to includeeligible Biharis on the voter list so their rightsare assured. Bangladesh’s military-backedgovernment has promised parliamentaryelections before the end of 2008. UNHCR alsocontinues to encourage Pakistan to receivethose Biharis whose families are splitbetween the two countries.

In Bangladesh, the young Urdu-speakers

call their desired affirmation of full rights‘rehabilitation,’ and Hasan defines it this way:“When a boy from the camp gets elected asan MP, when people get public service jobs,then we will be rehabilitated.”

Inside Geneva Camp, amid all the povertyand misery, that still seems like a distantdream. An older man approaches twovisitors from UNHCR walking down the street.“We have been living in Geneva Camp for 36years and things are going from bad toworse,” he says. He has a simple request:“Please pray for us.”

(Above) Those Biharis who still live in urban settlements in Bangladesh face many restrictions in their daily lives, including limitededucational and employment oportunities. However, electricity and water are provided free of charge by the authorities.(Opposite) Many Biharis still live in poverty-stricken conditions in the settlements, 36 years after the civil war that made them stateless.

“ I feel I am Nobody aNd doN’t eveN kNow

why I’m liviNg. BeiNg stateless, you are always

surrouNded by a seNse of worthlessNess.”

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illustrated by the situation of people of Haitian descentin the Dominican Republic, where there are be-lieved to be hundreds of thousands of stateless peo-ple. Although the country’s constitution states that allchildren born on the territory automatically acquirenationality (except those born to foreigners ‘in tran-sit’), the failure to register births has meant that manyare left stateless as they cannot show where theywere born or who their parents are. The problem par-ticularly affects descendants of migrant labourers fromneighbouring Haiti. The Inter-American Court ofHuman Rights found in 2005 that existing practicewas discriminatory and ordered the Government toregister all births in the country.

UNHCR’S ROLEB e c a u s e r e f u g e e a n d s tat e l e s s n e s s

problemsoften overlap, the unGeneral Assembly gaveunhcr a mandate to deal with statelessness in 1974.The agency was specifically charged with providinglegal assistance to the stateless and helping to promotethe avoidance and reduction of statelessness globally.

Though its early work was mainly confined to east-ern and central Europe, in recent years unhcr has ex-panded its activities to Asia, Africa, the Middle Eastand the Americas.

un High Commissioner for Refugees AntónioGuterres, in a 2006 address to unhcr ’s governingboard, stressed that it was necessary to boost effortsto find solutions: “We were able to resolve stateless-ness situations with practical assistance in the Ukraine,fyr Macedonia, and Sri Lanka by helping hundredsof thousands of stateless individuals obtain a nation-ality, and are now involved in a meaningful coopera-tion programme with the Russian Federation. But suchsuccess stories have been too rare. We want to changethat.”

He proposed a concerted programme of coopera-tion with other specialized agencies – for example birthregistration campaigns with unicef – as the bestway forward. unhcr is also linking up with variousother agencies, including unfpa, to continue the vi-tal process of cataloguing stateless people through theorganization of joint censuses with states.

thousaNds of people remaiN stateless today

iNto a black hole created by aN

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A person of Haitianorigin working in a salt mine in theDominicanRepublic, wherehundreds ofthousands ofstateless peoplelive a precarious,poverty-strickenexistence.

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THE LAWMAKERS“ The best way for parliamentarians to

demonstrate their determination to reduce or elim-inate statelessness,” said Anders B. Johnsson, Secre-tary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (ipu),“is by ensuring that the issue is addressed politicallyin parliament, that appropriate national laws areadopted and that governments are held to account.”

unhcr and the ipu are continuing to urge statesto introduce nationality legislation to prevent state-lessness, and the two organizations jointly produceda handbook for parliamentarians that providespractical advice for drafting citizenship laws.

Chile provides an encouraging example of howstatelessness can be solved through decisive action bydetermined parliamentarians. “Children born toChileans abroad used to be in a very unjust situation,”explained Isabel Allende, daughter of a former pres-ident and Member of Congress. “In order for them toacquire Chilean nationality, they had to come to Chileand live here for an entire year. This meant that manychildren born to Chileans in exile were stateless –because they simply were not in a position to returnto Chile.”

Isabel Allende was one of those who pushed for achange in the law (which had been brought in by thePinochet regime), and in 2005 a constitutional reformwas passed by parliament. Now, she said, “simply byvirtue of being born to a Chilean father or mother, the child can be registered at a consulate and is immediately granted Chilean nationality.” Mean-while, legislators in nearby Brazil are focusing on legislation to address a very similar problem there.

LEGAL TRIPWIRESA few slight slip-ups in the framing of a

citizenship law can have extraordinary repercussions– as Canadians have been finding out to their bewil-derment.

New us travel regulations in the wake of the 2001terrorist attacks mean that Canadians now need apassport to cross a previously relaxed border. Some ofthe thousands of people applying for a passport (ortheir pensions), were informed they were not Cana-dian. As the cases proliferated, so did the number oflegal tripwires they exposed (mostly linked to someunfortunate interplay between previously obscureelements of the 1947 Citizenship Act and its 1977amendment).

y because they fell

expiriNg empire.

The BidooNB Y A B E E R E T E F A A N D

A S T R I D V A N G E N D E R E N S T O R T

The Bidoon, who are scatteredacross the Gulf States, aresometimes confused with

the Bedouin. Some of them actuallyare Bedouin by origin, but otherBidoon originate from Iran, Iraq, Syria,Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States –and even from Zanzibar. In fact, theirname – which means “Without” inArabic – is a direct reference to theirstatelessness. They are the people leftwithout a nationality when Kuwaitbecame independent in 1961, followedby Bahrain and Qatar and theformation of the United Arab Emirates(UAE) in 1971.

“This was a major trade route andmany merchants were moving backand forth,” explains a UAE expert onthe Bidoon. “Some settled down andothers were moving constantly. Atthat time there were no borders, nopassport control and no system ofregistering and recording births. Itwas a tribal system.”

No one knows for sure how manypeople became Bidoon when thevarious Gulf States set up theirregistration systems and establishedtheir country records. In the UAE,estimates range from 15,000 upwards.In Kuwait, the official number is91,000, and there are very roughestimates of up to 70,000 statelesspeople in Saudi Arabia, but no officialfigures.

During the early years, life for theBidoon was generally not toodifficult. However, the huge numberof migrant workers required toservice the rapidly expandingeconomies of the oil-rich Gulf States,meant that the indigenouspopulations were soon very much inthe minority – and as a result theissue of citizenship became

extremely sensitive. Matters were complicated further

– especially in Kuwait – by the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam Hussein’s 1991invasion of Kuwait. The loyalties ofthe Bidoon were called into question.Some, indeed, ended up in Iraq afterthe war, and remain stateless there.The difficult situation of the Bidoonin Kuwait is the subject of continuousdebate. Kuwait’s government andparliament have both expressed theirdesire to find solutions, and effortscontinue in that direction.

Although the issue remainssensitive, one state after another hasstarted to take measures to at leastalleviate the problem, if not yet tosolve it fully. The pioneer wasBahrain: in 2001, the governmentthere naturalized 2,090 Bidoon, whowere of Iranian origin but no longerhad any links with Iran.

Then in October 2006, the UAE

issued directives aimed at findingsolutions for the Bidoon. TheSupreme Federal Council, which iscomprised of the rulers of the sevenEmirates that make up the UAE, gavethe green light for the naturalizationof the first group of 1,294 people. Atotal of around 10,000 Bidoon shouldbenefit by the time the process iscompleted.

Abou Ali is 44 years old, and isemployed by the UAE government.Despite being one of the better-offBidoon in the Gulf, he was stillthrilled to be among the first groupwho received their citizenship inJanuary. “The day I was called in fornaturalization by the authorities is aday I will never forget,” he said, duringa recent interview in a Sharjah cafe,“After many years of living here, andat times feeling lost, my ship hasfinally arrived to a port. This countryis my past, present and future, andthe future of my four children.”

R E F U G E E S16

Canadians began discov-ering they were in fact tech-nically not Canadians be-cause they were the childrenof Canadian soldiers whomarried overseas. Or be-cause they themselves wereborn abroad (includingadults whose mothers hadpopped across the border toan American hospital to givebirth because it was closer

than the nearest Canadian hospital – for many yearsa common and accepted practice). Or because at somepoint their father had moved to the us to work and

had taken out us citizenship, not realizing that thisaction affected his entire family.

According to the law as it stood between 1947 and1977, Canadians born abroad who were not residingin Canada on their 24th birthday, were obliged to fillout a form saying they wished to keep their citizen-ship. Unfortunately it seems some were never in-formed of this or various other requirements.

One woman described the last scenario to a Par-liamentary Standing Committee: “I am BarbaraPorteous. I am a Canadian. Canada says no, you are a70-year-old woman without a country. On February2 last year, I applied for a replacement citizenship cardto facilitate applying for a passport. On 31 July, I re-ceived a letter from Citizenship and Immigration that

A few slip-ups iN the framiNg of a citizeNship

B Y N I N I G U R U N GA N D E R I C P A U L S E N

Ihave an identity now,” said Birash MayaMajhi, amazed by how easy it was: anhour’s walk, a bit of a wait in line before

handing over her application form, photo-graph and some supporting documents. “Andthen we were asked to come the next day tocollect our citizenship certificates!”

Birash is one of a reported 2.6 millionNepalese people who received citizenshipcertificates during a massive governmentcampaign to regularize their situation in thefirst few months of 2007. Hundreds of mobileteams criss-crossed Nepal’s 75 districts, visit-ing even the remotest of mountain villages, toensure that certificates were issued to asmany stateless people as possible.

This extraordinary logistical feat stemmedfrom the Nepal Citizenship Act of November2006, which tackled the country’s long-standing “citizenship problem” – the estimated 3.4 million people who did not havecitizenship certificates, and as a result suffered from a heavily truncated set of civil,social and economic rights. One of the mainaims of the Act was to ensure that all eligibleNepalese can vote in forthcoming elections.

De facto statelessness as a result of inef-fective or undocumented citizenship has beena long-standing problem in Nepal. The poor-est and most marginalized communities in thecountry have tended to be the worst affected.Many were unaware of their right to citizen-ship, or of the importance of possessing a cer-tificate. Others simply did not have the meansto obtain one. Other factors leading to a lackof documentation included discriminationagainst women, the perception of somegroups as “non-Nepali,” and insufficient stateinfrastructure to carry out the paperwork.

Human rights activists had long com-plained that, under previous laws, only menwere allowed to pass on their Nepalese na-tionality to their children. Under the new law,mothers can also do so, subject to certainconditions. However, these provisions haveyet to be fully implemented, as a result of ad-ministrative hurdles and deeply-engrainedcultural factors.

“My husband refused to support me to getthe certificate saying that, as I do not have togo out to work, there is no need for one,” saidJanaki Kumal, a mother of two. “When I wentto the certificate distribution centre, I wastold that since I am married, they cannot issuethe certificate without my husband’s formal

consent.” Other women reported their husbands

stopped them obtaining certificates becausethey wanted second wives or feared propertydisputes. And some fathers did not see anyneed for their daughters to obtain them, as theywould soon be their husbands’ responsibility.

There are also still quite a few people inrural areas – including women – who remainunconvinced of the value of a certificate. “Ourparents did not have a citizenship certificate asthey never felt the need for one. It is the samewith us. We are not educated, nor are our chil-dren – so why do we need one?” said Gyani,who lives in a remote village in Chitwan district.

One of the areas most affected by the “citizenship problem” is the Terai region bor-dering India, where the local Madhesi peoplehave often been labeled as Indian rather thanNepalese. Even though they may have livedfor generations in the same village, manyMadhesi do not have birth certificates, land titles or indeed any of the supporting documentation required to validate their citizenship claims.

In an effort to get round this problem, thenew law includes a temporary two-year provi-sion allowing for citizenship by birth (insteadof solely by descent). Under this provision,

Nepal moves mouNtaiNs

Barbara Porteous,aged 70, one of theso-called ‘LostCanadians.’

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stated: ‘You ceased to be a citizen June 14, 1960, the dayfollowing your 24th birthday, as you were not resid-ing in Canada on that date, nor had you applied to re-tain your citizenship prior to that date.’”

Perhaps the strangest category of all includes thosewho discover they are not citizens because their grand-fathers or great grandfathers were born out of wed-lock. This seems to have hit the descendants of a Cana-dian Mennonite community in Mexico particularlybadly (the authorities in Mexico at that time refusedto recognize their marriages).

The Canadian authorities, taken aback by theplethora of problems that have suddenly emerged,have tabled a citizenship bill for the autumn of 2007.In May, Canada’s Minister of Citizenship and Immi-

gration Diane Finley highlighted the key areas thatwill be covered by the new legislation: anyone bornor naturalized in Canada on or after January 1, 1947will have citizenship even if they had lost it under aprovision of the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act, shesaid. And anyone born outside the country to a Canadian parent – whether married or not – after 1947, will also be citizens – so long as they are the firstgeneration born abroad.

But malfunctioning laws are often not so easily un-tangled. Each case has to be examined in depth andthat takes time. And new laws take time to draft – otherwise they may just make a bad situation worse.Law-makers need to be very alert. If it can happen inCanada, it can happen anywhere. �

p law caN have extraordiNary repercussioNs.

A Dalit womancollecting stonesfor a living.Although someDalits remainundocumented,others benefittedfrom the recentNepalesegovernmentcampaign thatregularized thecitizenship statusof some 2.6million people.

individuals born before April 1990 who provethey have spent their entire lives in Nepal nowqualify for citizenship.

Prakash Bote also recently got a citizenshipcertificate for the first time. He is a member ofan indigenous group known as the Bote, whoearn their living as forest fishermen. However,since the establishment of the ChitwanNational Park in 1973, fishermen have needed a

licence – and in order to apply for a licence,one has to have a citizenship certificate. Manyof the Bote have therefore been preventedfrom pursuing their traditional livelihood forthe past quarter of a century.

“The citizenship certificate has changedmy life tremendously. I now have a licence tofish and can easily earn 50 to 100 rupees aday,” Prakash said.

The campaign has been a resounding suc-cess – and shows what is possible when a stateis determined to get to grips with stateless-ness. “Within a short span of time, the numberof people with ineffective citizenship has beendramatically reduced,” said Abraham Abraham,UNHCR’s Representative in Nepal. “TheGovernment of Nepal should be highly commended.”

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B Y C É C I L E P O U I L L Y

ALBERT EINSTEIN(1879-1955)physicist, born in Germany STATELESS FROM 1896 TO 1901

Albert Einstein had the un-usual distinction of being a state-

less person in the 19th century and arefugee in the 20th. He was bornGerman, but renounced his nationalityin 1896 and remained stateless for thenext five years. In 1901, he became aSwiss citizen. He regained his Germancitizenship in 1914 when he became amember of the Prussian Academy ofSciences, and received the Nobel Prize forPhysics in 1921 for his explanation of thephotoelectric effect. After Adolph Hitlerbecame Chancellor of Germany in 1933,Einstein resigned from the Academy, re-nounced his German nationality for a sec-ond time and became a refugee (notstateless this time, since he had retained hisSwiss citizenship). He moved to the UnitedStates, where he received a hero’s welcome,and in 1940 became an American citizen.

MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH (1927-2007)cellist, conductor and political activistSTATELESS FROM 1978 TO 1990

On 15 May 1978, Mstislav

Rostropovich, the most famouscello player on earth, learned from watch-ing the news on French television that heand his wife, the renowned Bolshoi sopranoGalina Vichnevskaïa, had been stripped oftheir Soviet nationality for “systematic actsharmful to the prestige of the ussr.”

“We were obliterated,” he recalled in a1997 interview with Strad magazine.Claude Samuel attended the press confer-ence that followed: “It was very moving: hespoke about the injustice and she, Galina, ofthe cruelty of the decision. Those who werepresent will never forget it – it was so pow-erful. They hadn’t planned what they weregoing to say, hadn’t written anything down.It came straight from the heart. They hadbeen ripped from their country.”

Rostropovich it was much more than an actof showmanship. “There, in front of thatwall as it lost its stones, I suddenly regainedmy lost citizenship… Those who have beendeprived of their identity understand whatI had to put up with – the sheer pain, themost intimate of wounds. That moment litup my whole life. It wiped away fifteenyears of disgrace and humiliation.”

Their principal crime in the eyes of theregime was the support they gave toAlexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prizewinning author of The Gulag Archipelago,whom they accommodated in their dachaafter he lost his home in Moscow. The finalstraw came in 1970 when Rostropovichwrote an open letter defendingSolzhenitsyn and protesting against the re-strictions on cultural freedom.

For the next four years, Rostropovichand his wife were isolated and their per-formances were heavily circumscribed.Finally, in 1974, they were granted exitvisas. Although personally devastated,Rostropovich’s career flourished. His famewas such that several of the 20th century’smost famous composers, includingShostakovich, Prokofiev and BenjaminBritten wrote pieces specifically for him.

The impulsive and irrepressibleRostropovich had a huge appetite for life,and continued to champion dissidents suchas the physicist Andrei Sakharov.

But, despite all the success, the pain of exilenever disappeared. Rostropovich decoratedhis Parisian apartment in a manner reminis-cent of one of the Tsar’s palaces: “It’s mydacha in the Far West, I buy everything thatreminds me of my Russia,” he told his friend, the French TV producer Jacques Chancel.

In November 1989, Rostropovich flew toBerlin and played Bach in front of theBerlin Wall as joyful Germans tore it down.It was a quite extraordinary scene, but for

Legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich infront of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

“You have no idea how humiliating it is to be a ‘worthless

citizen’ – they chased us out.”

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Stateless Einstein was stateless for five years before acquiring Swiss citizenship in 1901.

“Nationalism is an infantile disease.

It is the measles ofmankind.”

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In 1990, his Soviet citizenship was offi-cially restored by President MikhailGorbachev. When communist hard-linerstried to overthrow Gorbachev in August1991, Rostropovich rushed to the besiegedParliament and linked up with BorisYeltsin and others opposing the coup.

When he died, just four days afterYeltsin in April 2007, thousands of tearfulmourners filled Moscow’s golden-domedCathedral of Christ the Saviour, alongsidePresident Vladimir Putin, Solzhenitsyn’swife Natalya, Yeltsin’s widow Naina, andhis own widow, fellow exile and life-longsoulmate, Galina. When the burial cere-mony was over, the mourners burst intospontaneous applause.

Rostropovich, and the state he loved andcriticized in equal measure, were finally de-finitively reconciled.

MARGARETHE VON TROTTAfilm-makerBORN STATELESS IN GERMANY IN 1942

Margarethe Von Trotta is oneof Europe’s best known female di-

rectors. She began her career as an actress,working with several of the great late 20thcentury German film-makers such asRainer Werner Fassbinder and WimWenders. As a director, she soon carved outher own reputation as a brilliant analyst ofcomplex female relationships, and hasmade a string of acclaimed movies includ-ing “Marianne and Juliane” (1981, winnerof the Lion d’Or at the Venice FilmFestival) and “Rosenstrasse” (2004).

“I was born in Berlin, and because mymother never tried to become German,she remained stateless and I was automati-cally stateless too,” she told Refugees

magazine in an interview. “My motherwas born in Moscow. After the revolution,the whole family had to flee and – likemany Russian emigrés at that time – theylost their nationality.”

Her mother was not married, and thepair struggled financially. Although shewas a good student, the young Margarethewas stigmatized for being stateless, father-less and penniless.

“It was a constant problem. I studied inParis for a while. You always had to have avisa, and people to act as your guarantors. Toget to Paris, I had to cross Belgium, and forthat I needed a transit visa. One time, I didn’thave one – I was only 18 – and in the middleof the night they made me get off the trainat the border. I was in the middle ofnowhere. I had to hitch a lift to Paris, becauseI had no money left…

“I wanted to have a nationality – I didn’tcare if it was French or German – just be-cause I wanted to be freed from all thosetravel difficulties.” She finally got rid of herfremdenpass (the German passport for cer-tain people without a nationality), whenshe got married for the first time, aged 23.

“But I still feel likea foreigner every-where I go,” shesaid. “That has stayed with me.”

STEFAN ZWEIG(1881 – 1942) author, born Austrian MADE STATELESS IN 1938

Stefan Zweig was a celebratedEuropean intellectual and writer.

Deeply depressed by World War I, he be-came a committed pacifist. Because he wasJewish, in 1934 he was forced to flee hiscountry of birth, Austria, and becamestateless. He ended up in Brazil, where heand his wife committed suicide inFebruary 1942. He wrote about being state-less in his autobiography The World ofYesterday:

“The fall of Austria brought with it achange in my personal life which at first Ibelieved to be a quite unimportant formal-ity: my Austrian passport became void andI had to request an emergency white paperfrom the English authorities, a passport forthe stateless... [E]very foreign visa on thistravel paper had thenceforth to be speciallypleaded for, because all countries were sus-picious of the 'sort' of people of which I hadsuddenly become one, of the outlaws, ofthe men without a country, whom onecould not at a pinch pack off and deport totheir own State as they could others if theybecame undesirable or stayed too long...

“Since the day when I had to dependupon identity papers or passports thatwere indeed alien, I ceased to feel as if Iquite belonged to myself. A part of the nat-ural identity with my original and essen-tial ego was destroyed forever.” �

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Margarethe Von Trotta in 1977,directing her first solo feature “TheSecond Awakening of Christa Klages.”

“I don’t even know if I wanted tobe German... If, every time

someone asks you what nationality you are, you say

‘stateless,’ it is as if you don’t fully belong anywhere.”

Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was forced to flee by the Nazis.

“Formerly man had only a body and soul.Now he needs a passport as well, for without

it he will not be treated as a human being.”

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No, I don’t have a national ID card. Idon’t even have a birthcertificate,” said K. Thangavelu,

folding his hands across his lap. He doesn’tappear to think there is anything oddabout that – and where he lives, thereisn’t. He is 58, but looks much older, with athin frame and coarse wrinkled facebearing witness to a harsh life spentworking outdoors on one of Sri Lanka’srenowned tea plantations.

Like his father and grandfather beforehim, Thangavelu is a tea-pickeremployed on the Bopitiya estate, one ofhundreds of tea plantations spread acrossSri Lanka’s picturesque hill country. Mostof the people working on these estates aredescended from Tamils imported fromIndia between 1820 and 1840, when theisland was still under British colonialrule. Although these “Hill Tamils” havebeen making an invaluable contributionto Sri Lanka’s economy for almost twocenturies, the country’s stringent

citizenship laws had made it almostimpossible for them to be legallyrecognized as citizens. Without theproper documents, these stateless peoplecould not vote, hold a government job,open a bank account or travel freely.

Things improved dramatically whenin October 2003, the Sri LankanParliament passed the “Grant of

Citizenship to Persons of Indian OriginAct” to give immediate citizenship topeople of Indian origin who havelived in Sri Lanka since October 1964and to their descendants. Theusually lengthy process of attainingcitizenship was simplified by a“general declaration” countersigned

by a justice of peace as proof ofcitizenship.

There were an estimated 300,000stateless “Hill Tamils” in Sri Lanka at thetime of the new law. The un refugeeagency organized a media campaign withthe immigration authorities, theMinistry of Interior and the CeylonWorkers’ Congress to inform the stateless

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Over 190,000 stateless tea-pickers have been granted citizenship thanks to a ground-breaking new law, but others are still waiting to benefit.

(Below) Tamil tea-pickers waiting to go to work. Their ancestors wereimported by the British from India in the 19th century.

Principal tea-growing areas

R E F U G E E S 21

tea-pickers about the law and theprocedures for acquiring citizenship.Mobile clinics and volunteers weredeployed to the plantations to answerquestions and fill in the necessary forms.Local authorities, aid workers and unionrepresentatives took part in workshops tobetter understand the country’s

A plantation worker shows thereceipt for his wife’s citizenshipapplication.

citizenships laws, and to address practicalissues such as access to basicdocumentation and voter registration. A separate information campaign wasorganized for an estimated 10,000stateless people who had been displacedin the north and east by the inter-ethnicfighting in 1983.

More than 190,000 peopleobtained Sri Lankan citizenshipover 10 days in late 2003. “Almostovernight, the stateless populationin Sri Lanka was more thanhalved,” said Amin Awad,unhcr’s Representative inColombo. “It was a huge successstory in the global effort to reducestatelessness.”

However, the process ofobtaining the necessary papers hasslowed down in recent years, withmany plantation workers unawareof — or unable to exercise theirright to receive — basicdocumentation as citizens of Sri Lanka.

“I completed the application fora National Identity Card and sent itto the grama niladari [localgovernment official] two years ago.But I have heard nothing further,”complained K. Thangavelu. Askedwhy he doesn’t pursue the matter,he said, “The grama niladari is athis office only three days a week.The office is very far from theestate. So I have to spend one wholemorning there, and then I will loseout on my daily wage. How will myfamily eat that day?”

DELAYS & OBSTACLESIn addition to the

bureaucratic process, there is also anelement of exploitation by some estateowners who profit from their workers’legal limbo. Tea-pickers are paid 170 SriLanka rupees (a little over $1) for a day’swork, provided they bring in a minimumof 18 kg of tea leaves. At the end of themonth, estate workers each receive Rs.3,740, but only if they work the full 22

success story

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Tea-pickers on one of the famous Hatton tea estates. Some plantation workers are still unaware of their right to become fully documented citizens of Sri Lanka.

days. If the world tea market goes up, theyreceive an additional Rs. 25 a month. At present, with a 12 percent inflationrate, such a wage is barely enough to feedone person for a month, let alone a familyof 17 like that of Anthony Nalliah,another tea-picker on the Bopitiya estate.

With illness and old age beginning to catch up on him, 55-year-old Nalliahfeels he will soon be forced to give up hisgruelling job. Fortunately, he is not hisfamily’s sole breadwinner, as all but one ofhis children are now employed by theestate. Nalliah’s biggest fear is that,because of his statelessness, he will notreceive the money owed to him when heretires. “They will ask me for all sorts ofdocuments like my national identity card,

birth certificate and marriage certificate. Idon’t have any of these. Then what will Ido? I don’t want to stay at home and be aburden to my family. Until I get thesedocuments sorted out, I will work for aslong as I am able.”

Anthony’s youngest son, 17-year-oldNithyanandan, had more ambitiousplans. “I never wanted to work in theestate like my siblings,” he said. “But I hadto stop my education two years agobecause my parents couldn’t afford to send me to school. I travelled to Colombowhen I was 16 and worked for a shortwhile at a poultry farm there, but I had tocome back because of the securitysituation.”

In a city wracked by periodic bombs

and suicide attacks by the Tamil Tigerrebels, Nithyanandan was subjected tolengthy questioning by Colombo’ssecurity forces after he was unable toproduce proper identity documents. Inthe end he decided to return home andapply for his national ID.

A full year has passed since he applied,and he has still not received a responsefrom the authorities. So Nithyanandanfeels he now has no option but to join therest of the family working on the estate, atleast until his documentation is finalized.“I feel guilty staying at home while myparents work hard to feed me,” he said.“So I will work in the estate here until Iget my national ID card, but I really don’tknow how long it will take.”

Prior to 2003, Sri LaNka’s striNgeNt citizeNship

laws made it almost impossible for the ‘Hill

Tamils’ to be legally recogNized as citizeNs.

R E F U G E E S 23

“Almost overNight, the stateless populatioN

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Ignorance is largely to blame, said Mrs.Arumugam, the principal of a smallschool on Chrystler’s Farm estate inHatton, Nuwaraeliya district, consideredby many to be the centre of Sri Lanka’s teaindustry. After 30 years of teaching atestate schools, she stresses theimportance of changing parents’attitudes.

“We try and educate the studentsabout the need for national identity cardsand proper documentation,” she said.“But when they tell their parents, thechildren’s comments are simply brushedaside. Some parents also question whynational identity cards and birthcertificates are important, because theythemselves have managed perfectly finewithout them. So these children grow upwith absolutely no evidence of theirparentage, except a piece of paper issuedby the estate management.”

If the children continue with their

education until the age of 16, the school isresponsible for obtaining their nationalidentity cards. However, of the 366students studying at the school she heads,Mrs. Arumugam says only a few will goon to complete their gce “O” Levelexams.

“All of these estate families are livingbelow the poverty line, and they need asmuch assistance as possible to survive,”she said. “The paltry amount they earn isnot at all enough to feed and clothe theyoung ones, let alone send them to school.As soon as they feel the children are oldenough, the parents put a stop to theireducation and send them to work on theestates.”

NEW OPPORTUNITIESBut slowly, surely, some real

advances are taking place. Former Hattonresident Kalyani, has successfully em-barked on a new career outside the tea in-

dustry after getting her national identitycard in 2006. She is now working as a geriatric nurse in Colombo.

“I was really thankful when my national identity card arrived because it allowed me to travel to Colombo and findwork here,” said the 23-year-old. “I amearning much more than I would have if Istayed on at the estate.” Her husband is alsoapplying for his national identity card andwill then join her in Colombo. “He is withmy two-year-old son in Hatton. Mymother takes care of the child while hegoes to work, but very soon all of them canjoin me here for a much better life.”

With a bit of luck – and plenty of com-mitment by those enlightened Sri Lankansdetermined to end the unjust situation ofstateless people – more of the estate work-ers will soon be able to reap similar successfrom the massive contribution their fami-lies have made to the Sri Lankan economyover the past 200 years. �

R E F U G E E S24

Sorry, wroNg B Y M A R K M A N L Y

Two people meet and fall in love.They are married and havechildren. But what happens if

husband and wife have differentnationalities and the wife is unable totransmit her nationality to her children?The ending is not always a happy one.

The Association Démocratique desFemmes du Maroc describes thedifficulties encountered in Morocco bychildren with a Moroccan mother but anon-Moroccan father: “The child had nocivil registry card. The mother had toapply for a re-entry visa each time shewished to take her child abroad. From theage of 15, the child was required to have aforeigner’s residence permit which hadto be renewed each year. The child haddifficulties registering at university afterobtaining the baccalauréat.”

Many children born to mixedmarriages will acquire the father’snationality and, in principle, should beable to obtain a passport and live in hishome country. If the father is stateless,however, the children may be unable toacquire any nationality.

Freddy is around 50 and has spent allhis life in Egypt, but that did not makehim an Egyptian. Nor, under Egyptianlaw, did the fact that his mother wasEgyptian give him any automatic right tonationality. “I was born in Cairo; myfather was a stateless person ofArmenian origin. He came to Egyptafter the First World War, when theOttoman and Russian empires collapsed.Despite the fact my mother had Egyptiannationality, I am stateless like my father,”he says, adding “I suffer from asthma, Iam single. I don’t have much to offer afamily.”

Even when the father does have anationality, if his country’s laws do not

permit him to pass it on to children bornabroad, they may end up stateless.

Sometimes a child who is entitled tohis or her father’s nationality may stillfail to get it because his country does nothave a consulate in the state where thechild was born, and the family cannotafford to travel somewhere where thereis a consulate.

On other occasions, the marriage fallsapart and the father refuses or neglects toregister a child, and the mother – whodesperately wants to pass on hernationality – cannot do so.

DISCRIMINATORY LAWSThis form of discrimination

against women used to be very common.In fact, the notions of “dependentnationality or "unity of nationality ofspouses” previously predominated innationality legislation worldwide. Theassumption was that dual nationality

should be avoided, and the whole familyshould possess the same nationality —namely the father’s. As a result, thewoman was supposed to take thenationality of the man upon marriageand so were any children she might bear.The possibility that the father might nothave a nationality, or that a mixedmarriage might end in divorce, was nottaken into account.

Discriminating against women, whenit comes to passing on nationality, isprohibited by two international humanrights treaties: the 1957 Convention onthe Nationality of Married Women, andthe 1979 Convention on the Eliminationof All Forms of Discrimination AgainstWomen (cedaw). As a result, the practicehas gradually been abandoned by moreand more countries.

There are, however, still dozens ofstates in Africa, Asia and the Middle Eastthat retain such discriminatory measures.

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Although 185 countries are party tocedaw, many have entered reservations tothe provisions on nationality, so are notbound to respect them.

WELCOME CHANGESDespite this, there are clear signs

of a change in the air, with active civilsociety campaigns to amend the lawsunder way in various countries. InMorocco, the Association Démocratiquedes Femmes du Maroc (adfm) lobbiedthe Government for years to change thelaw. It has also linked up withorganizations doing similar workelsewhere in the region. According toadfm, “we try to share the positiveresults we have achieved with othercountries in the Middle East and NorthAfrica, via a network of ngos called theWomen’s Learning Partnership.Together, we have launched a regionalcampaign for the equality of men and

women when it comes to acquiring andtransmitting nationality.” The LearningPartnership is also working in Algeria,Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.

Governments are becomingincreasingly aware of the adverseimpact gender discrimination onnationality issues can have on people’severyday lives. A number of countrieshave recently adopted, or are currentlyconsidering, new laws that seek toaddress this situation. Since 2004, forexample, Egypt, Morocco, Iran andBahrain have all adopted laws whichallow children to acquire their mother’snationality – although unfortunatelyseveral of these countries continue to setat least some restrictive conditions onthe transmission of nationality viawomen (for example, in some countries,the father’s nationality is passed onautomatically, while a mother mustapply to naturalize her children). Also,

in some cases, the new laws do not applyretrospectively.

In Morocco, the Governmentpromised in 2005 to amend the 1958Nationality Code to allow women topass on their nationality to theirchildren, and the amended NationalityCode duly came into force in early 2007.adfm notes that many children born toforeign fathers have already requestedMoroccan nationality and have beenable to acquire it, but warns it is still toosoon to evaluate the overallimplementation of the new law.

INDONESIAN EXAMPLEIn 2006, Indonesia adopted a new

Citizenship Law which, at least with regard to gender equality, is a model forother countries. Indonesian Member ofParliament Tuti Indarsih LoekmanSoetrisno said that when she and othermembers of a parliamentary committee

R E F U G E E S26

B Y K I T T Y M C K I N S E Y

In danger of being ostracized as an “old maid” in Viet Nam at the age of 27,Loan thought she had found the ticket

to an easy life when an older Taiwaneseman asked to marry her and promised towhisk her out of poverty.

“My father and mother thought the manlooked honest, so they advised me to marryhim,” she says ten years later. She is nowback living under her grandmother’s roof,with her two small children, deserted by ahusband who won’t even take her phonecalls. Worst of all, even though she is in herhome country, she is now stateless – deprived of all the rights she grew up taking for granted.

Loan’s plight is far from unique.Thousands of poor Vietnamese womenwho have married Taiwanese (or other for-eign) men over the last 10 years have seentheir dreams of a good life crumble. Sometell tales of alcoholic, abusive husbands,cruel mothers-in-law, linguistic confusion,cramped living quarters, deprivation, abuseand economic exploitation. When they ar-rive back to seek refuge in the land of their

birth, they find that they – and often theirchildren too – have become stateless.

Between 1995 and 2002, more than55,000 Vietnamese women married for-eigners, with the figure approaching 13,000in 2002 alone, according to Viet NamMinistry of Justice statistics. The bride-grooms – mainly from Taiwan, SouthKorea, Hong Kong and Singapore – areoften older, badly off workers who are un-able to attract a woman or afford the re-quired elaborate wedding in their ownprosperous countries.

Loan’s husband was 37 when they mar-ried in 1997. “He lived with someone else be-fore, but he couldn’t get married to herbecause his economic status was low inTaiwan,” Loan explains frankly. “That’s whyhe came to Viet Nam to find a wife.”

Few of the foreign husbands orVietnamese wives enter these marriageswith romantic illusions. The Viet NamWomen’s Union of Ho Chi Minh City,which tries to advise women heading intoforeign marriages, and to help those whoseunions collapse, found in a survey that 86percent of such marriages are contracted foreconomic reasons, with the women dream-ing of a better life abroad. Nowadays, withprosperity on the rise at home, women inthe booming southern Ho Chi Minh City(formerly Saigon) have fewer reasons to

contract economic matches. So would-beforeign grooms are now trawling the im-poverished Mekong Delta for desperate, un-educated brides.

For many, the legal problems start toarise when the wife applies for naturaliza-tion in her husband’s country. In Taiwan, forexample, the process requires her to re-nounce her Vietnamese citizenship first; asa result, if the marriage fails before she ac-quires her new citizenship, she ends upstateless.

That’s exactly what happened to Loan,who dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief asshe tells her story, sitting in a sewing ma-chine shop that her grandmother rents out.At her husband’s request, Loan renouncedher Vietnamese citizenship and was on trackto become Taiwanese. But she became preg-nant for the second time just as her hus-band’s company went bankrupt, so he senther back to Viet Nam to have the baby.

They were already having problems.Her mother-in-law, she says, hated foreign-ers. They lived all crammed together withother relatives in a tiny home. And althoughLoan learned to speak some Chinese beforethe marriage, “we could only talk on thesurface of a subject, not deeply on mattersbetween a husband and a wife.”

But as Loan tells it, the final blow to hermarriage came when the second child (like

The stateless brides ofViet Nam

If a marriage fails before the womaN acquires

Gradually those small harmful geNder-related

on citizenship made field visits duringthe drafting of the law, they witnessedfirst-hand the impact of the previous lawon women and their families.

“In the 1958 Law, nationality wastransferred primarily through the fatherand only in special cases could the

mother transfer her nationality,” shesaid. As a result, Indonesian women whomarried foreigners faced many problems.“Their children and husbands were con-sidered foreigners with very limited im-migration status, which obliged them toleave Indonesia every year to renew their

visas – for which they had to pay a sub-stantial amount. If something happens tothe marriage, the mothers do not haveany right at all to custody of their chil-dren.” The new law, she says, providesimprovements “such as a much broader,generous and more gender-neutral defi-

Lose a husbaNd, lose a

the first) turned out to be a girl – not the sonher husband was desperately hoping for.“He came here to visit me, but when he sawthat I gave birth to a daughter, he left anddisappeared forever.”

In the four years since he deserted her,her life has been a bureaucratic nightmare.Stateless women like Loan have lost thevery right to have rights – to work legally orto get social assistance. Without Vietnamesecitizenship, Loan and her daughters areadrift, not entitled to the vital family-bookidentity document essential for every trans-action between citizens and governmentinstitutions in Viet Nam. Her older daugh-ter, now seven, is Taiwanese and thereforenot eligible for free education in aVietnamese state school. Like many otherstateless mothers, Loan is facing highcharges for the private schooling for herchildren.

Since her husband abandoned her in2003, she says wearily, “I have to go back andforth to the department of justice and theTaiwan office, and the immigration office, toapply for a visa for my children and arrangeeducation for them. I hope we can get thepaperwork done so my first child can go toschool.”

Although justice department authoritiesin Ho Chi Minh City say they are workinghard to restore citizenship to stateless

women whenever they hear of such cases,abandoned stateless brides often have no ideahow to set about getting their citizenship re-stored – and some fall prey to the same typeof unscrupulous intermediaries who soldthem into marriage in the first place. Loansays a local lawyer she consulted wants us$5,000 to help her get her citizenship back –an unimaginable sum for her.

The un refugee agency is also workingto prevent and resolve statelessness not onlyin Viet Nam, but around the world. “Wehave considerable experience on such issues

which we can share to address these prob-lems,” says Hasim Utkan, the Bangkok-based regional representative for unhcr

responsible for Viet Nam. “It is good to seethe issue is being handled by the govern-ment with so much transparency.”

Restoration of citizenship now looks onthe cards for Nguyen Thi Diem Chi, an ele-gant, self-assured 33-year-old who says shemarried her Taiwanese businessman hus-band for love, not money. Fluent in Chinese,she had worked for him as an interpreter inHo Chi Minh City before their marriage,and then moved to Taiwan, where she hadtwo children.

Speaking of her former husbandwithout rancour, she says the marriagefell apart because “we were incompatible –my husband couldn’t understand me.” Shesaid her husband asked her to give up herVietnamese citizenship but then, to herconsternation, blocked her efforts tobecome naturalized in Taiwan.

Now back home with her two children,to whom she still speaks Chinese, she is notwasting time feeling sorry for herself.Instead she has been busy building herself anew life, with a good job as manager of aseafood restaurant and a well-furnished upscale home of her own.

Even so, she says, life without citizenshipis a struggle: “It’s difficult because I don’thave an ID card or a family book, but I amtrying to get my Vietnamese citizenshipback and I think I am about to get it,” shesays, cuddling her baby daughter. “Then lifewill be better.” �

R E F U G E E S 27

her New citizeNship, she eNds up stateless.

clauses iN citizeNship laws are beiNg chipped away.

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Nguyen Thi Diem Chi back in Viet Nam without a nationality after her marriageto a Taiwanese man broke up.

nition of citizenship… Under the newlaw, citizenship is awarded to all childrenwho have at least one Indonesian citizenas parent, whether married or not.”

She noted however that many govern-ment officials in the field were still notaware of the new legislation. “Therefore,

whenever I have a chance, I am usingevery opportunity to disseminate the im-provements in the new law, and the gov-ernment regulations, by visiting townsand villages in Indonesia, as well asIndonesian Consulates and Embassiesoverseas so that the benefits of the new

law will be enjoyed by as manyIndonesians as possible.”

It’s a slow, grinding process, but grad-ually those small gender-related clausesin citizenship laws around the world thathave caused so much hardship are beingchipped away. �

couNtry

R E F U G E E S28

B Y C É C I L E P O U I L L Y

Until recently, relatively little attention had been paid to theproblem of statelessness in

Africa. But gradually that is beginning tochange – not least because of the realiza-tion that statelessness has already had aseriously destabilizing effect in somecountries, and because there are cur-rently risks of large new groups of peoplebeing rendered stateless as a result of po-litical developments on the continent.

COLONIAL LEGACYMany of the borders in modern

Africa were arbitrarily established by thecolonial powers, and most of the inde-

pendent states that materialized after thecolonial era ended have a spectacular variety of ethnic groups. Some of thesehave never been formally considered asnationals despite living in a particularcountry for generations. The possibilityof redrawing some of the colonial bordersin a more logical manner was consideredand dismissed during the 1960s in case itcaused more problems than it solved.

The state that is now known as theDemocratic Republic of Congo (drc), forinstance, has received several waves ofmigrants and refugees from Rwanda. Inaddition, a 1910 convention between thesuccessive colonial rulers Germany andBelgium resulted in some areas formerlycontrolled by the King of Rwanda being

annexed to the Belgian Congo, along withtheir inhabitants.

This group of people, known as Banyarwanda, expanded as a result ofsubsequent waves of migration afterWorld War I, and the political crises thattore Rwanda apart in 1959, and again during the 1970s.

Since independence, the issue of theBanyarwanda’s nationality has been a consistently contentious factor in Congolese politics. They have been repeatedly granted and deprived of their Congolese nationality and have fre-quently become embroiled in competitionfor land and political power. They havealso developed a difficult relationship withthe small and crowded neighbouringcountry with whom they are linked byname and by origin, but not by nationality.

GIVE AND RETAKEThe 1964 Constitution, followed

by a Decree Law adopted in March 1971,gave Congolese nationality to all Ban-yarwanda who had been living in easterndrc before 1960. However, less than a

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year later there was a partial U-turnwhen a new law decreed that Banya-rwanda who had arrived in Zaire (as thecountry was then called) after 1 January1950 were not nationals.

In 1981, the legislation was amendedonce again to the effect that Zairian nationality could now only be granted toBanyarwanda who could prove that theirdirect ancestors had lived in Zaire since1885. Since birth registration in the 19th century was – to put it mildly – farfrom systematic, this resulted in mostBanyarwanda having their rights retroactively revoked, leaving them effectively stateless.

The massive influx of refugees andfighters into eastern drc in July 1994, fol-lowing the Rwandan genocide, reinforcedthe mistrust between the various ethnicgroups and intensified the fierce debateover nationality. This issue was a majorfactor in the 1996 war and continued tocontribute to the chronic instability thathas affected this immense country in theheart of Africa (see Refugees No. 145 fora more detailed analysis of the situation indrc).

Recently the situation of the Banya-rwanda has taken a turn for the better: a 2004 nationality law, and the 2005 Constitution, confirmed that Banya-rwanda who can prove they were in thecountry at the time of independence are,along with their descendants, once againconsidered citizens of drc.

THE LOYALTY QUESTIONAfter the 1998 war with Eritrea,

the Ethiopian authorities decided to de-nationalize some of its citizens who hadtaken part in a 1993 referendum on the in-dependence of Eritrea. It was argued thattheir participation in the referendum wasproof that they belonged in Eritrea, andtherefore (since Ethiopia does not permitdual nationality) they were stripped oftheir Ethiopian citizenship.

Both countries had traditionally

hosted large numbers of each other’s peo-ples – some 600,000 people of Eritreanorigin in Ethiopia, and about 100,000 peo-ple of Ethiopian origin in Eritrea. But, asrelations continued to deteriorate, theybegan deporting some of their own citi-zens whose loyalties they found suspect.A few people were physically stranded inno man’s land for years. Others remained,but effectively became stateless.

DEMOCRATIC PARADOXIronically, the growing number

of elections being held in African stateshas in some cases inflamed the debateover nationality. “The issue of who can –or cannot – vote suddenly matters a greatdeal,” said James Goldston, executive di-rector of the Open Society Justice Initia-tive which is running projects to combatstatelessness in Africa. “As a result, thepower to grant, withhold or deny citizen-ship has become an attractive politicalweapon.”

In Côte d’Ivoire, the issue of nationalidentity (often referred to as ‘ivoirité’) hasbeen a major factor in the armed conflictthat split the once-prosperous WestAfrican country in 2002.

For decades, the flourishing Ivorianeconomy attracted millions of foreignworkers from Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigerand Guinea to work in cocoa plantations.In many cases they were given the rightto own land and even to vote. Pointing outthis long tradition of migration and hos-pitality, President Houphouët-Boigny –who remained in control of the one-partystate from 1960 until his death in 1993 –declared: “In this country, we are all for-eigners.” A 1998 population censusshowed that 26 per cent of the Ivorianpopulation were officially classified as‘foreigners,’ although a large proportionof them had been born on Ivorian soil.

WHO IS A REAL CITIZEN? In the 1990s, a burgeoning

economic crisis led to friction between

plantation workers of foreign origin andlocal villagers who had sold or leased themland. The fragile ethnic balance began tosplinter and references to ethnicity be-came a central element of the political de-bate, revolving around fundamentalquestions such as “Who is a real Ivorian?”and “Who is entitled to vote in elections orrun for office?” Matters began to come to ahead when Alassane Ouattara, a northernMuslim of Burkina Faso descent and one ofthe main political figures, was barred fromrunning for the presidency.

Issues surrounding the immigrantworkers were prominent during and afterthe attempted coup d’état in 2002, withfeelings running very high and outbreaksof violence aimed at communities viewedas ‘foreign.’ The armed conflict formallyended in January 2003, and the March

Some regimes fiNd it hard to resist the

temptatioN to maNipulate NatioNalitiy issues.

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2007 Ouagadougou Agreement marked afurther important step towards lastingpeace. As part of the reconciliationprocess, the National Unity Governmentdecided to organize audiences foraines –mobile courts which can conduct latebirth registrations and issue birth certifi-cates, which can then be used to establishnationality and enable people found to beIvorian to vote in future elections.

ONE STEP FORWARD, ONE STEP BACKEfforts to address the issue of

statelessness are being made in severalother African countries, especiallythrough measures to ensure birth regis-tration. But at the same time, as TrevorNcube points out (see story opposite),some regimes find it difficult to resist thetemptation to manipulate nationality is-sues in order to erase political opposition.Perhaps the best-known example of thiswas when Kenneth Kaunda, President ofZambia from 1964 to 1991, was stripped ofhis Zambian citizenship by his successorin 1995.

ENVIRONMENTAL THREATIt has long been predicted that

climate change, and the ensuing competi-tion for water, would lead to conflict. InAfrica, such conflicts are already happen-ing. Increasing competition over natural

resources due to the desertificationprocess has led to frictions between sedentary farmers and nomadic herdersin the Sahel, especially in border areaswhere different groups had previouslymanaged to coexist more or less peacefullyfor many years.

After the Great West African Droughtof 1972-1974, the Mahamids – a small nomadic group totalling some 4,000 people – moved from eastern Chad toNiger’s Biltine region (around 1,000 kilo-metres from the border). In the 1980s,more Mahamids left Chad in order to es-cape the civil war there.

According to a 2001 census carried outin Niger, most of the Mahamids possessan id card issued by the local authorities.However, serious disagreements with lo-cal residents over the use of water re-sources and grazing rights led the centralauthorities to begin talking about ex-pelling the Mahamids in October 2006(although they pulled back from fulfillingthe threat).

In Mauritania, tensions between pastoralists and farmers went one stepfurther, contributing to the flight of thousands of Mauritanian nationals into Senegal in 1989 – a situation which finallyseems closer to being solved throughrestoration of nationality and voluntaryrepatriation. �

People of Eritrean origin deported from Ethiopia in 2001. As a result of the con-flict between the two countries many others lost their Ethiopian nationality but stilllive there as foreigners. Eritrea also deported people in the other direction.

B Y J A C K R E D D E N

Trevor Ncube was born in Zimbabwe.His father was a citizen, and Ncubekept in his home a laminated copy

of the document confirming he had takenan oath of citizenship. But in 2006, as thewell-known newspaper publisher tried torenew his Zimbabwean passport, he was toldhe had become stateless.

“You can never begin to imagine what itmeans to be stateless – until you arestateless,” Ncube said. “It has a hugelydebilitating effect. It dehumanizes you.Suddenly you are nobody. You begin to thinkabout who you are and where you belong… Itmust have been one of the most difficulttimes in my life.”

Ncube, in what he sees as a form ofpolitical harassment, had become a victim ofcomplex nationality laws that are leavinghuge numbers of Zimbabweans in danger ofbeing stateless. The problem is not unique toZimbabwe. It exists all across the continent –its roots usually arising out of the arbitraryborders drawn by colonial administratorsdecades ago. However, nowadays the mainthreat stems from the web of restrictive lawsconstructed by successor governments.

“They told me the document I hadconfirming I had taken an oath ofZimbabwean citizenship had lapsed because Ishould have gone to the Zambian embassy,and formally lodged a certificate renouncingmy entitlement to Zambian citizenship (asmy father was born in Zambia),” Ncube said,at the office in the South African city ofJohannesburg where he oversees his growingnewspaper holdings.

Using his nearly full Zimbabweanpassport, Ncube left the country of his birth,went to his main home in Johannesburg andlaunched a court challenge. “I won the casequite resoundingly: the High Court took avery dim view of what the officials in thepassport office had done.”

His lawyers interpreted the courtdecision as a precedent for others in thesame dilemma, but Ncube says he is

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constantly being contacted by others inZimbabwe who are facing a similar threat ofbecoming stateless. Ncube – who owns twonewspapers in Zimbabwe, as well as theinfluential Mail and Guardian in South Africa– is well aware that the option of hiring goodlawyers is not available to most people.

“The majority of people who findthemselves in the same situation as mine arefarm workers and general labourers in thecity centre, who are very poorly paid – sothey cannot afford thekind of litigation I wasable to put up,” he said.“That means the wholematter has really direconsequences forpeople.”

After winning back hisown citizenship, Ncubeused his Zimbabweannewspapers to launch acampaign to find outhow many other peoplewere in danger ofbecoming stateless. Mostcome from the poorestend of society, but somepeople, he said, occupiedhigh political positions.

“There could be acouple of millionZimbabweans in mysituation,” Ncube said.“For some people, thestatus of being stateless does not presentitself as a problem until they have to vote,until they have to get a birth certificate fortheir son, until they apply for a passport.”

Ncube’s problems arose from a number ofchanges to Zimbabwean law that took placein 2001. These had the effect of strippingmany white Zimbabweans who owned largecommercial farms of their citizenship. Theyalso resulted in the disenfranchisement ofmany of those farms’ labourers, whosefamilies had once come from neighbouringcountries — prompting allegations that thenew legislation was driven by fears such

people might cast their votes for theopposition.

In colonial times, farm labourers oftenmoved between what is now Zimbabwe andneighbouring countries – especially Zambia,Mozambique and Malawi. All three of thosecountries now have different laws governingcitizenship. Unlike many other states, noneof the nations in southern Africa allowpeople to hold citizenship of more than onecountry, and in some cases people may lose

their citizenship if they go to live abroad.Some offer children the original

citizenship of a parent – even when theparent has since changed his or hernationality. Sometimes citizenship must beactively claimed, and on other occasions it isinherited – unless formally renounced. Insome places, there is a deadline for deciding.Other countries allow a person born there tobecome a citizen by taking an oath; whereas,elsewhere, citizenship may be contingent ona parallel statement to the parent’s countryrenouncing citizenship there.

In many countries in Africa, and

elsewhere, the threat of depriving people ofcitizenship – making them stateless – is apowerful and tempting way for agovernment to control some of itsopponents. Even without political motives,the ambiguity over citizenship can fuel thexenophobia that is a growing problem inmany countries in Africa.

“African politicians are so aggrieved bywhat colonialism did to this continent… andyet one of the most destabilizing creations

of colonialism is theartificial boundaries ofAfrican states,” saidNcube, who is notafraid to tackle some ofthe continent’sthorniest issues. “Andthese rabidly anti-colonial politicians arehanging on to that, andI would think that oneday reality is going todawn for them.”

“So for me,” headded, “it is not aboutreviewing eachcountry’s citizenshiplaws but – at theAfrican Union level –unifying citizenshipbest practice andlooking at a much moreprogressive way oflooking at citizenship.”

Ncube would like to see African countriesadopt liberal citizenship laws, including theright to dual citizenship. He hopes his ownchildren will be able to make their owndecisions about which nationality theyadopt.

“We need to mobilize citizenship as a wayof strengthening our strategy for growth –and not use it to punish those you disagreewith,” Ncube said. “We don’t talk about thisissue of statelessness and citizenship inAfrica enough because there are a lot ofpeople who have been affected by thearbitrary use of citizenship.” �

N ly, you areNobody

Leading Zimbabwean newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube seeing how hispapers fare on the street, after reports that vendors were being harassed.

AFP

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