GLOBAL STATELESSNESS STATISTICS
III. AMERICAS
Statelessness is a ‘smaller’ problem in the Americas than in other parts of the world in terms of absolute numbers. UNHCR reports a total of 210,032 persons under its statelessness mandate in the Americas, almost all of whom are found in a single country, the Dominican Republic. There also does not appear to be a serious issue of known but unmapped situations of statelessness, such as that which exists in Africa. Only one further country in the Americas has been identified as presenting a significant, but as yet unquantifiable, problem of statelessness.
Table 4: Countries in the Americas with over 10,000 stateless persons or marked with *
Dominican Republic 210,000
Bahamas *
As mentioned earlier in this report, an important reason for this low number of stateless persons is the principle of jus soli which is common to the countries in the western hemisphere: by granting nationality to all persons born on the territory, regardless of parentage or other circumstance, any situation of statelessness fades away automatically with the next generation enjoying birth-right citizenship. As discussed next, the two counties in which statelessness has surfaced as a real problem are those in which restrictions have been placed on the jus soli conferral of nationality.
Dominican Republic
UNHCR reported figure (end 2013): 210,000
Statelessness in the Dominican Republic (DR) concerns persons of Haitian descent. Until 2010, the Constitution of the Dominican Republic granted nationality automatically to any person born on Dominican soil, with only the limited exception of children whose parents were diplomats or ‘in transit’ in the country at the time. Individuals born in the country thus acquired Dominican nationality, whether their births were recorded in the Civil Registry or not. In practice, this
narrow exception has long been applied in such a way as to deny many children of (presumed)128 Haitian descent access to Dominican nationality, often leaving them stateless – despite an Inter-American Court ruling which condemned these practices.129 The General Law on Migration adopted in 2004 expanded the ‘in transit’ exclusion for jus soli citizenship to children born to parents considered as ‘non- residents’, which is understood to include temporary foreign workers, tourists and students, among other categories. A 2005 ruling of the Dominican Supreme Court further expanded this exception to include all individuals without proof of lawful residence. This expanded definition of the ‘in transit’ exception was then enshrined in the new Dominican constitution adopted in 2010. Most recently, in 2013, the DR’s constitutional court ordered that this new interpretation of ‘in transit’ be applied to all individuals with Dominican citizenship born in the DR to migrant parents (i.e. retroactively, as far back as 1929).
This process resulted in the arbitrary deprivation of nationality on a massive scale. Those affected are left stateless because Haiti has prohibited dual nationality until 2012130 so those who enjoyed Dominican nationality could not also be Haitian.
There are no exact figures on how many Dominicans of Haitian descent are affected by this series of amended laws. A survey jointly conducted by the National Statistics Office and the UN Fund for Population (UNFPOA) estimated that 209,912 individuals were born in the DR of Haitian migrants.131 This matches the UNHCR figure of 210,000 stateless persons in DR at the end of 2013. The figure, however, captures only the first generation of persons of Haitian descent, born in the Dominican Republic. Given that the retroactive stripping of nationality affected individuals who were born in the country as far back as 1929, a far larger number of persons lost their entitlement to Dominican nationality because their parents or grandparents are considered never to have possessed it. For instance, Juliana Deguis Pierre, whose case before the constitutional court figures at the centre of the current problems, has four children herself. If Juliana is no longer considered
128 Often determined arbitrarily or on the basis of racial criteria.
129 Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Yean and Bosico v. Dominican Republic, Series C, Case 130, 8 September 2005.
130 Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Haiti: Dual citizenship, including legislation; requirements and procedures for former Haitian citizens to re-acquire citizenship (2012-January 2013), 8 February 2013, HTI104293.E.
131 See above, note 69.
Dominican, they also lost their nationality– yet only she appears in the statistic of 210,000 persons under UNHCR’s statelessness mandate. It is not possible, at present, to estimate the size of the further population affected – i.e. the second, third or even fourth generations born in DR who were also stripped of their nationality – but the fertility rate in the Dominican Republic is reported to be 2.8 children per woman.132 Thus, while there are also some recent legislative developments that look set to allow an estimated 10% of those affected to regain their Dominican nationality, the assessment of civil society groups is that statelessness actually threatens a far larger number of people in DR and the data reported is significantly underestimating the problem.
Other countries in the Americas
The Bahamas is the only other country in the Americas which has been identified within UNHCR statistics as having a significant statelessness problem – it is marked by an asterisk in UNHCR statistical data. The country generally adheres to the jus sanguinis principle, setting it apart from most other countries in the region. While provision is also made for jus soli acquisition of nationality, instead of an automatic entitlement at birth there is a procedure which must be completed within a year after reaching majority. Thus, under the Bahamian nationality law, children born in the country to foreign parents, or to a Bahamian mother and a non-Bahamian father,133 can only apply for Bahaman citizenship as a matter of right after they turn 18 but before they turn 19. After the age of 19, they can still apply for citizenship, but it is granted at the discretion of state authorities, and not by right. Persons of Haitian descent in the Bahamas report facing discrimination and lengthy delays in this citizenship application procedure.134 If they are also unable to access Haitian nationality, statelessness may result. The 2010 Population and Housing Census identifies a total of 39,144 persons of Haitian origin/citizenship.135 An overview of other estimates of the size of this
132 L. Fletcher and T. Miller, “New perspectives on old patterns: Forced migration of Haitians in the Dominican Republic” in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4, 2004.
133 See above, note 22.
134 College of the Bahamas and International Organisation on Migration, Haitian Migrants in the Bahamas, 2005, in particular annex 2.
135 2010 Population and Housing Census of the Bahamas, available at: http://www.
soencouragement.org/forms/CENSUS2010084903300.pdf. See also Krystelle Rolle, Census: Almost 40,000 Haitians in the Bahamas, Nassau Guardian, 22 November 2012.
population can be found in a 2005 study – most lie between 30,000 and 60,000 (with the occasional outlier estimate).136 Among this group, the number of stateless persons is unknown but may in fact be relatively small: the aforementioned 2005 study also reported on a survey conducted among the population of Haitian origin, which found that approximately 86% of the respondents held a Haitian passport.137 This must be interpreted in light of the fact that 90.7% of the respondents were actually born in Haiti so were themselves migrants, rather than descendants of migrants, making it less likely that they would have experienced problems with their nationality. Nevertheless, it shows that of the total population estimates for persons of Haitian origin in Bahamas, certainly not all of this community is stateless or even at risk of statelessness.138
A 2012 mapping study of statelessness in the United States revealed that over the course of five years, several hundred persons whose data was logged by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (in the context, for instance, of an asylum application) were recorded as stateless.139 It has been suggested that the total number of stateless persons in the country is a few thousand, although the figure has not been substantiated.140 Research in Canada shows a similar picture of a few hundred persons logged as stateless in the asylum or migration channels each year.141 Numerically more significant, over 66,000 stateless refugees from Bhutan, previously warehoused in camps in Nepal, were accepted for resettlement to the United States in recent years.142 They will hope to one day naturalise there and the new generation will automatically be US citizens – indeed, resettlement is
136 See above, note 134, pages 12-13.
137 Ibid, page 58.
138 Note that some of the literature on ‘statelessness’ in the Bahamas uses this term in a broader sense, to include persons who do hold a nationality but whose nationality does not come with the protection generally associated with nationality. See, for instance, K. Belton, “Arendt’s children in the Bahamian context”, in The International Journal of Bahamian Studies, 2010.
139 See UNHCR, Citizens of Nowhere: Solutions for the Stateless in the U.S., December 2012.
140 See the Congressional record for the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill, House Report 112-091, 2012, page 123.
141 UNHCR, Statelessness in the Canadian Context: An updated discussion paper, March 2012.
142 UNHCR, Refugee resettlement referral from Nepal reaches six-figure mark, 26 April 2013.
a recognised durable solution because it sets the refugee on a pathway to eventual citizenship so resettled individuals are no longer counted in refugee statistics nor tracked as refugees. In the meantime, however, statelessness is a feature of their lives and the total tally for the number of stateless persons in the Americas should also acknowledge such populations until such time as they have successfully naturalised.
Elsewhere in the Americas, the statelessness figures which are available suggest the problem is small – most reporting concerns a handful of individual cases identified in the migration context.
For instance, Mexico reportedly hosted just 13 stateless persons at the end of 2013. Statelessness may also continue to affect some people in Suriname as a result of problems in the interpretation and application of the nationality rules which were adopted by treaty with the Netherlands in 1975 to address the distribution of citizenship following Suriname’s independence.143 There are likely to also be cases of statelessness caused by gender discrimination that remains in place in some nationality laws in the region, specifically Barbados and the Bahamas. Nevertheless, all of these numbers are likely to be relatively small.
This brief exploration of statelessness in the Americas reveals a rather mixed picture. It is a region in which, aside from the stark exception of the Dominican Republic, statelessness has not arisen on a large scale. As explained, this is likely due to the generous jus soli regimes present in the majority of countries in the Americas as well perhaps to a particular perception on the role of citizenship as a state-building tool to unite people of different backgrounds under a system of civic equality. It is, after all, a region which has historically been defined by immigration and as such the approach to the regulation of nationality may naturally be more inclusive than in those places where nation- building has involved asserting a particular ethnic, religious or linguistic identity (to the exclusion of others). Yet, the situation that has unfolded in the Dominican Republic over the past year is the most egregious new violation of international human rights norms relating to nationality and statelessness that the world has witnessed in the
143 See H. Achmad Ali, De toescheidingsovereenkomst inzake nationaliteiten tussen Nederland en Suriname [The agreement on the assignment of nationalities between the Netherlands and Suriname], SDU, 1998; see also, B. van Melle,
“Surinaams, Nederlands of geen van beide?” [Surinamese, Dutch or neither?], in Asiel en Migrantenrecht, 2013.
21st century. Statelessness is also a problem of the Americas, not just in the Americas. Underreporting on the size of the population affected in the Dominican Republic and the lack of reliable statistics on stateless persons elsewhere – including, for instance, on the number of stateless who have been resettled to the Americas under refugee resettlement programmes mean that statelessness affects far more persons in the Americas than currently reported in UNHCR’s statelessness statistics – how many more, is not known.