Season’s Greetings! This blog will take a short break over the festive period, returning in January for more on legal identity, belonging, citizenship and statelessness. For those celebrating Christmas and New Year this month – enjoy the holidays. If, like me, you are travelling this holiday season – for pleasure or to join friends and family – spare a thought …
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 …
In my last blog, I looked at statelessness determination procedures as a tool to help eradicate statelessness and mitigate the effects of statelessness for stateless people. In this blog, I want to come back to this issue. I look more closely at how the procedure can help both stateless people and the state, which countries have made use of the …
The causes of statelessness are many and can include discrimination against particular ethnic or religious groups, or on the basis of gender, the emergence of new States and transfers of territory between existing States, and gaps in nationality laws. But statelessness is not an accident. It is often the result of legal, policy, or political decisions made by states. States …
I am proud and very happy to be a guest blogger on the excellent and informative blog by the European Network on Statelessness. The European Network on Statelessness is the collaboration of non-governmental organisations, academic initiatives, and individual experts committed to addressing statelessness in Europe. As well as conducting and supporting legal and policy development, awareness-raising and capacity building activities, the Network …
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 …
Statelessness 10 million people are currently stateless and many more are at risk of statelessness. Article 1(1) of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons defines a stateless person as: “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”. A lot is written about statelessness and stateless people …
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 this blog I tend to examine the legal aspects of identity and of how it impacts groups and individuals. But I have noticed recently a lot of chatter about blockchain technology and its potential uses in relation to legal identity and for identity documents. Being the kind of lawyer that is not that technically savvy, I want to delve …
