Tag Archives: inclusivity

Adapting to absence – Can outcomes at COP26 help prevent climatic statelessness?

COP26

This blog is part of a series examining climatic statelessness and the impact of slow onset climate change and extreme events on small island states and communities. Immediate action is needed to protect small island states from loss of their land and therefore their statehood, their identity and their lives.  Adaption is crucial to ensure that these communities are not …

Equally unequal – inclusion of the stateless and the undocumented in responses to Covid-19

Covid-19

Nearly 18 months on from the start of the pandemic, a lot has changed.  We (well, some of us) have access to vaccines, ventilators, oxygen and even funding to support those who have suffered loss of earnings.  But many countries have struggled to provide the healthcare and financial support their residents and citizens need.  Equally, rolling out the vaccine has …

Recognition turns to registration – how the Shona Community won the right to Kenyan citizenship

Shona Community

I previously wrote about two marginalised communities in Kenya, the Nubian and the Somali communities, and their struggle to obtain legal status and citizenship. Both communities face burdens not imposed on most other Kenyans. But they are not alone in campaigning for recognition as citizens of Kenya.  In this blog I reflect on the recent progress made by the Shona …

Love thy neighbour (and legalise their status) – Colombia and its approach to migrants from Venezuela

Colombia migrants Venezuela

Colombia was recently praised for recognising what should be obvious: the arrival, over the last couple of years, of some 1.5 million migrants and refugees from its neighbour Venezuela might be Venezuela’s loss, but it is Colombia’s gain.  Colombia chose to maximise the benefits it will gain from the new arrivals by giving legal status to Venezuelan migrants and refugees.  …

Covid-19 – How the stateless virus is affecting stateless people

Covid-19

I had every intention of posting new blogs at the usual twice-monthly rate as the Covid-19 outbreak started.  After all, now that I am in lockdown and not commuting to work, would I not have much more time for this and all manner of other (indoor) activities? I had not appreciated how much head space would be taken up with …

A Civic Death – citizenship-stripping of Foreign Terrorist Fighters

Citizenship-stripping

“What are the implications for national and international security of allowing terror suspects to be loose and undocumented in whatever country they happen to be in when their citizenship is revoked?…There are many unanswered questions” Baroness Smith of Basildon, Parliamentary debate in the UK House of Lords, 17 March 2014 Citizenship-stripping of ISIS and former ISIS fighters stops them from …

Integrated and interoperable – are harmonised identity systems a realistic aim for states?

Late last year I discussed whether digital identity is the answer to universal individual legal identity. In this blog I look at a related issue: states which struggle to provide a legal identity for all are being asked to take a leap forward and harmonise their identity systems to make them interconnected and interoperable.  What does this mean?  Is this …

If your name’s not on the door – an update on citizens excluded from Assam’s Register

Assams Register

It has been six months since the Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) of 1951 received its final update.  I have written about the continued impact of updating Assam’s Register in previous blogs here and here.  Around 2 million people are excluded after the final count. More and more is written about this crisis in the making, the impact it …

Forever delayed – statelessness “under consideration” in Lebanon

Lebanon

In this blog I consider the causes of statelessness in Lebanon.  The situation in Lebanon is complex, for historic reasons, due to discriminatory nationality laws, administrative challenges and its large long-term refugee population, primarily from Syria and Palestine.  There is enough material to fill a whole book, never mind just the one post. In this blog I focus on statelessness …

A scattered people – remembering the Nansen Armenians

Nansen Armenians

“The people of the earth have thus entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere. The idea of a cosmopolitan right is therefore not fantastic and overstrained; it is a necessary complement to the unwritten code of political and …