The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights addresses the problem of statelessness by stating that “[every] child has the right to acquire a nationality.”3 The Convention on the Rights of the Child works out the right of the child to a nationality further by stating that children "must be registered immediately after birth and have the right to a name from birth, [and] the right to acquire a nationality. Prevention of discrimination, the rights of non-citizens, the final report of the Special Rapporteur, Mr. Prevention of discrimination, The rights of non-citizens, Progress report of the Special Rapporteur, Mr.
In fact, the instruments themselves are meant to erode the importance of the very concept that originally gave rise to the idea of fundamental human rights [i.e. The general rule is thus that each of the Convention's rights must be secured without discrimination between citizens and foreigners. It should be noted that this is not one of the non-derogable articles mentioned in Article 4.
The principles of human rights in relation to citizenship are not defined, despite the inspiration of the conventions themselves in Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The drafters of the 1954 and 1961 conventions did not define statelessness to include actual statelessness for at least three reasons. 41. First, the drafters wanted to avoid overlap between the 1954 Convention and the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.42 At the time, the overlap between the 1954 Convention on Statelessness and the 1951 Convention on Refugees was deemed redundant, as the drafters of both Conventions relating to the Status of Refugees The Conventions wrongly assumed that everyone was de facto stateless.
As previously mentioned, the drafters of the 1954 and 1961 conventions assumed that all de facto stateless persons were and could conceivably be refugees. De facto statelessness, on the other hand, was assumed to be the result of an action on the part of the individual, such as fleeing citizenship due to persecution by the state. The drafters of the 1954 and 1961 Conventions considered that all those who were persecuted and who did not have effective citizenship would be considered refugees and would receive assistance from the international community under the terms of the [Geneva] Convention of 1951 concerning the status of refugees.
Quite deliberately the drafters of the 1954 convention regarding the status of stateless persons thus adopted a strict legal definition of stateless persons.44. In the information and accession package for the 1954 and 1961 conventions, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees lists ten reasons why people become stateless. For example, let's take a situation in which a male citizen of the United States moves to Belgium, marries a Belgian woman and fathers a son.
Concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United Nations. However, the citizenship laws of the other state do not allow dual citizenship and require The former citizen could expect to be granted citizenship in the state that controls the territory she calls home.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, Addendum: Report on the Mission of the Special Rapporteur for Poland on the Issue of Trafficking and Forced Prostitution of Women (May 24 to June 1, 1996), UN Report
OBSTACLES, HARDSHIPS, AND HURDLES FACED BY STATELESS PERSONS
Unfortunately, criminals and traffickers are not the only ones who can render people stateless by denying citizens the means to prove their citizenship. For example, in 1992 the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovenian government covertly removed the files of many non-Slovenian Roma from the registers of Slovenia's permanent residents.9 9 The files were moved from the 'active' Registrar of Permanent Residents (RPR) to the inactive or "dead" RPR. In Hannah Arendt's seminal book Eichmann in Jerusalem 103, Arendt notes that at the 2004 Wannsee Conference, prior to the Nazis' implementation of the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question," the Nazi government deliberately made all Jews stateless.
34; Bidun experience problems with the registration of marriages between Bidun couples or between a Bidun and a Kuwaiti citizen because the Bidun member(s) of the couple do not have a civil ID and a letter from the Ministry of Home Affairs must obtain and complete a lengthy security check." 11 6. Although it is not certain that RA was stateless, RA's case is illustrative of the kinds of challenges stateless persons without documentation often face. Unnecessary imprisonment is one of the most comprehensive and difficult problems facing stateless persons.
According to UNHCR, the inability of stateless persons to return to their countries of habitual residence after leaving them, often to seek asylum or refugee status, often results in prolonged detention outside their country of habitual residence.126 the reason for such detention is that without proof of identity or citizenship, stateless persons are often unable to re-enter their country of habitual residence. The problem of prolonged and unjustified imprisonment is often exacerbated when countries that have failed to resolve the question of where to send a particular stateless person nevertheless try to get rid of the stateless person by deporting him to another country that also refuses to receive the person. 12 that "[everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own"137 and that "[n]o one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his country."'38 Despite the ratification of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, countries such as Kuwait continue to deny stateless persons the right to leave and return to their countries.
It should be noted that, according to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, this language "does not distinguish between nationals and aliens" and therefore "allows for a broader interpretation that could cover other categories of long-term residents, including but not limited to stateless persons persons who are arbitrarily deprived of the right to acquire the citizenship of the country of such residence." General comment to Article 12, General comment no. Biduns are not isolated from this population.4' On the contrary, these problems are typical of the plight of stateless persons everywhere. Furthermore, the cases earlier in this chapter involving victims of human trafficking and women victims of dependent citizenship laws also illustrate cases where statelessness results in an impediment to the right to return to one's own country.
Sections of the 1961 Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child are also illustrative of preventive remedies. In the same spirit, the Convention on the Rights of the Child compels a state party to grant citizenship at birth to all children born within its territory, "in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless."4 9 The remedies against statelessness proposed by the previously cited Human Rights Watch report as well as the 1961 Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child are preventive because when properly implemented, the means preclude statelessness prior to its development. For example, Article 27 of the 1954 Convention obliges States Parties to "issue identity papers to any stateless person in their territory who is not in possession of a valid travel document. Such provisions may alleviate some of the difficulties associated with statelessness, but change not fundamentally.one's stateless status.
For example, the Sri Lankan parliament implemented a naturalizing remedy for statelessness in 2003 when it passed a law granting citizenship to more than 168,000 stateless Tamils. ethnic Chinese."53 Interestingly, none of the UN treaties mentioned in this chapter, including the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, oblige state parties to implement naturalizing remedies for statelessness. As long as statelessness exist, all three of the remedies mentioned above are important and essential.
International Law and the Implementation of Remedies for Statelessness
CONCLUSION
