Paper rights – could citizenship in name only solve the problem of statelessness?

Giving citizenship to people who are displaced or stateless is the best way to ensure a sense of belonging.  But what if this is citizenship on paper only and it is of a country where the person has never been and where he or she will not be allowed to reside? Is that person in effect only in possession of paper rights? Can this hollowed-out version of citizenship, which comes without the real rights and obligations that form part and parcel of ‘true’ citizenship, be of any use?

Using the example of the Bidoon living in the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, this blog considers whether these paper rights can still go some way to solving the problem of statelessness.

 

Citizenship as a package of rights and obligations

Citizenship, or at least one aspect of it, is the legal dimension of belonging, the formal, legal status to which specific legal rights and obligations attach. It includes identity, and often, territorial or group membership too ¹. It is this sense of belonging and of membership that a stateless person lacks, as well as the legal identity that comes with citizenship. I wrote a long list of what is lost to an individual who is stateless here. It is clear from that list that citizenship of a country can cure many disadvantages, discriminatory practices and obstacles faced by a stateless individual.

Recently, there have been examples of countries speeding up the process of becoming a citizen and holding mass naturalisations to help those stranded in their country to feel at home and to belong. Tanzania for example, did just that in 2015, offering the choice to 200,000 Burundian refugees, either to return to Burundi or to take up Tanzanian citizenship. 79% of those eligible chose the citizenship option ². Guinea-Bissau, too, has recently taken a similar initiative. It sought to improve the lives of seven thousand Senegalese refugees who many years ago sought refuge in Guinea-Bissau and now no longer have homes and home villages in Senegal to which they can return.

 

Citizenship unbundled leaving only paper rights

But is it possible to think of citizenship as simply paper rights? In other words, is it possible to imagine citizenship as a concept unbundled from the rights and obligations which usually accompany our idea of citizenship?

This is precisely what happened with thousands of stateless Bidoon living in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait who, over the last few years, have been issued with Comoros citizenship and passports ³. Their Comoros citizenship is just such an example of an unbundled citizenship, resulting in nothing more than paper rights.  Their citizenship of the Comoros does not come with residency rights in the Comoros, or with any of the usual rights and duties which accompany being a citizen of a given state.

 

Who are the Bidoon?

The story of the Bidoon and their marginalisation is worth its own blog post, but in summary, the Bidoon, are also known as stateless Arabs. They live, and for a long time were nomadic, across a number of Arab Gulf states. In the case of Kuwait and UAE, the Bidoon effectively became a stateless minority around the time when Kuwait and the UAE solidified their borders and determined who should be a citizen of their newly created states.  Anyone residing within the state borders, but not eligible for citizenship is a ‘bidoon’, otherwise known as ‘without’.  In the UAE, the Bidoon are said to number 10,000 (according to official statements, but the number could be a lot larger) ⁴. In Kuwait, the number is much larger, and although no correct figures exist, somewhere around 100,000 ⁵.

In Kuwait, anyone not eligible to become a citizen at independence from the UK, gained in 1961, was meant to be only ‘temporarily without citizenship’.  But this turned out to be anything but temporary. Over time more and more of the Bidoon’s limited rights have been eroded.

When it comes to UAE, similarly, some residents were given citizenship straightway in 1972. However, many remained without citizenship. Some because they were not aware of their rights, some because the requirements became stricter, or because of initial suspicions that citizenship could limit traditional migration patterns, previously unrestricted by state borders ⁶.

 

How did the Bidoon end up with Comoros Passports?

How did so many UAE and Kuwaiti born Bidoon come to hold the passport of a state to which they have never been, and which is more than 2,500 miles away from UAE and Kuwait?

The scheme started ten years ago in September 2008. In the UAE more than 7000 application form were given out, each application handed out to a family potentially interested in taking up Comoros citizenship. The UAE had pledged to pay the Comoros $200m in exchange for the naturalisation of up to 4,000 Bidoon families. For the Comoros, the sale of passports to the Kuwaiti and UAE governments would raise revenues to help develop the Indian Ocean nation.

The intention was that stateless Bidoon families would obtain Comorian citizenship documents as a first step towards integrating in their actual home country, UAE or Kuwait, respectively.  Crucially, the new Comoros citizens would not have the right to physically move to or reside in their new country of citizenship ⁷.  To give a sense of the reach of the scheme, an estimated 40,000 people in UAE now have Comoros passports, not a small number, compared to Comoros’s own population of 800,000 ⁸.

 

New freedoms and new rights?

But if a person cannot go to their “new home” and take up residency there, what value does this citizenship and this passport have?

There are two key aspect to acquiring citizenship which can make a difference to a stateless person or a refugee without documents. The first is having legal identity and proof of that identity through a passport or an ID card. The second is the freedom to move and travel, both within a state and between states.  It is true that not everyone who is a citizen of a country has or needs to have a passport, especially if they have other forms of ID, or do not need to travel outside that country. But for those who have no other documents to evidence identity and entitlement to basic rights within a state, or for those who need to travel, a passport is an essential document.

It seems that even divorced from the true meaning of citizenship, these paper rights can still improve the quality of life for a stateless Bidoon.  For example, a Comoros passport holder can now marry someone who is an Emirati. This would not have been possible for a stateless individual in the UAE.  And it seems that it has also improved education opportunities for the Bidoon, since children with a Comoros passport have been allowed to enrol in schools previously reserved to Emiratis.

But there are limits, too, to these new rights and freedoms. As non-Emirati citizens, access to healthcare is limited and the right to buy land is also not available to the new Comoros citizens.

 

Flaws in the system

The Comoros citizenship scheme, perhaps unsurprisingly, had many flaws. Abuse was rife and resulted in passports being made available not to those who were stateless ⁹, but to people of more nefarious backgrounds, such as two Iranian nationals accused by the US of breaking sanctions ¹⁰. And it may be that the scheme was unlawful in the first place, since the parliamentary vote on the scheme may have violated parliamentary procedures. In the end, a change of government in the Comoros put an end to the scheme.

 

Bad execution, good idea?

But this is not really about the Bidoon, or about the UAE or Kuwait, or about the myriad of flaws in the scheme. It’s about considering whether a paper rights citizenship can be one way to address the obstacles that come with being stateless.

On the one hand, having a citizenship, a passport and a legal identity are all positives.

On the other, paper rights citizenship can never be more than just a half-measure to combat statelessness ¹¹

We have seen this half-measure in operation when it comes to the Bidoon. The New York Times article exploring the Bidoons’ status argues that the reason the UAE government promoted this ‘solution’ was to avoid treating its own residents as citizens. By doing so it would not have to share access to generous social welfare benefits that recognised citizens of UAE can access ¹². The Comoros citizenship and passport may be a way to integrate the Bidoon to give them more rights and a legal identity, but it is also a demonstration of the limit of acceptance of the Bidoon within the state.

 

Paper rights or a (partial) solution to an unsolvable problem?

If paper rights citizenship is a way for a state to abdicate responsibility for the stateless within its borders, are we better off recognising this limitation? Maybe, if the limitations exist, we ought to focus on trying to find effective ways around them.  With those limitations in mind, we may need to move past state boundaries and the limits of citizenship accorded at the discretion of a particular state.

Perhaps the most we can do is to work towards giving stateless people access to truly universal human rights. Human right such as a legal identity and freedom of movement that respect and promote dignity, even if they do not emanate from belonging to a particular state.  Paper rights may not be a long-term, or the best possible solution to the problem of statelessness. But if – for those stateless people unlikely to get full citizenship rights no matter how long they wait – having a passport, any passport, removes some of the barriers they face, does it matter where that passport comes from?