For many of us, citizenship only really matters when we travel abroad, when the Olympic Games are on, or when we vote in national elections. We do not think about our citizenship on a daily basis. For others, citizenship is…
In legal terms, being stateless means that no state considers you a national under the operation of its law. The practical implications of this are very serious. For instance, stateless persons generally are not recognised as persons before the law…
For more than twenty years activists have produced declarations that implicitly link statelessness to the challenges of providing human security and promoting dignity, thus bringing it inside the human rights regime; for example, in 1986 the Declaration on the Right…
From 1951, Nepal granted citizenship on the basis of a person’s birthplace and descent. Naturalisation was possible for those who had been resident in the country for at least five years. A decade later, however, the provisions relating to naturalisation…
The people known in Bangladesh as ‘Biharis’ or ‘stranded Pakistanis’ are the Urdu-speaking descendants of Muslims who lived in the different Indian provinces and most of from Bihar and who, at India’s partition in 1947, moved to what became East…
“…it’s a small paper but it actually establishes who you are and gives access to the rights and the privileges, and the obligations, of citizenship.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu, launching Plan’s Universal Birth Registration campaign, February 2005[1] Registration means proof…
In the Dominican Republic, the questions of birth registration and nationality are closely entwined. As is common in Latin America, the rule of jus soli here means that a Dominican birth certificate has become the evidence of nationality for children…
Hundreds of thousands have fled to Bangladesh and further afield to escape oppression or in order to survive. There were mass exoduses to Bangladesh in 1978 and again in 1991-92. Each time, international pressure persuaded Burma to accept them back…
Physical restriction, including prolonged or indefinite detention, of those who have no effective nationality is increasingly common around the world.[1] Preliminary analysis of available research suggests that practically all types of stateless persons may be at risk of arbitrary detention.…
In the muddy setting of an overcrowded camp in Bangladesh, Jhora Shama[1] tells me her story. Jhora is an unregistered refugee, a Rohingya, who has been living illegally in Bangladesh for 16 years. She fled to Bangladesh from Arakan [Rakhine]…