An estimated 5.4 million individuals in Nepal (24 per cent of the population aged 16 years and above of Nepal’s 30 million population) do not have citizenship documentation. I wrote about all the basic rights that are unavailable to a stateless person here. Statelessness in a population arises for a number of reasons such as minority group discrimination, migration issues, …
In this blog I take a second look at legal identity for children in light of South Africa’s recent proposals to refuse to issue birth certificates to children born in South Africa to foreign parents. I look at the new proposals which have attracted much criticism and consider attempts elsewhere to do the same. The impact of restricting birth registration …
The recent Universal Children’s Day on 20 November raised the issue of legal identity and access to basic rights for children. Children’s Day celebrates the date UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In this blog I want to use the Convention’s provisions on legal identity and identity documents as a starting point to …
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 …
In late July I wrote a blog about the plight of more than 4 million people in Assam Province, India, who are now at risk of statelessness. The people affected are not on the latest draft of Assam’s National Register of Citizenship (NRC), published on 30 July. Absence from the Assam NRC means that they are not confirmed as citizens …
Stateless or nationality unknown In this blog I want to look at what it means to be stateless or of nationality unknown in the Netherlands. More than 4,000 stateless people are currently living in the Netherlands. In addition, another 80,000 people are registered as ‘nationality unknown’. The Dutch government gives an individual the label ‘nationality unknown’ for a variety of …
In this post I examine the issue of statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire. I argue that the country needs to move on from the discriminatory treatment of stateless and undocumented people within its borders, especially children. Côte d’Ivoire also needs to take steps to fulfil the commitments it has made to eliminate statelessness under international law. Forced and voluntary migration …
Millions at risk of becoming stateless in Assam Province After 30 July 2018 the status of millions in Assam Province could change overnight. Al-Jazeera, the Hindu newspaper and The Independent , amongst others, have recently featured stories about the five million people at risk of becoming stateless in Assam Province, India, as they are now required to prove that they …
In its recent judgment Hoti v Croatia the European Court of Human Rights considered what it means for the Applicant to be stateless and without access to an effective and accessible procedure in the host state to obtain residency and legal status. Background to the claim in Hoti v Croatia Mr Hoti, the Applicant, moved to Croatia in the 1980s as a teenager …
In my earlier post,I discussed the domestic and international legal provisions on voting and voter registration in Kenya. In this post, I delve deeper and look at the barriers facing minority communities in Kenya in evidencing their Kenyan citizenship. My focus is on the experiences of evidencing citizenship for Kenyan-Somalis and the Nubian Community in Kenya. Kenya’s Somali Ethnic Group …
