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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2017
Statelessness, or the condition of being formally excluded from citizenship everywhere, has been deemed a “scourge” and “the most forgotten aspect of human rights in the international community” by the newly elected UN Secretary-General, António Guterres. In 2014 the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has the mandate for the protection of stateless people globally, launched the #IBelong Campaign to eradicate statelessness by 2024. A key component of the campaign is its Global Action Plan to End Statelessness (GAP), which consists of ten actions for governments and other interested parties to undertake to end statelessness worldwide. Since the campaign's ability to end statelessness is only as strong as the regional and local actors who implement the GAP on the ground, this essay examines how the campaign has been implemented regionally. Given that Guterres and others have identified the Americas as having the potential to be the first region to end statelessness by 2024, the current essay evaluates the region's progress toward this goal.
Editor's note: This is the second in a two-part series on UNHCR's global #IBelong Campaign. The previous essay, which appeared in the Winter 2016 issue (vol. 30, no. 4), evaluates the transformative potential of this campaign—and the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness that undergirds it—to fulfill each person's human right to a nationality.
1 The “scourge” quote is taken from UNHCR, “UNHCR Announces Push to End Statelessness Worldwide by 2024,” November 4, 2014, www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/press/2014/11/545752c47a6/unhcr-announces-push-end-statelessness-worldwide-end-2024.html. The Guterres quote is from a speech he gave at the Americas Launch of the Global Campaign to End Statelessness on November 18, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ygeXwoTOAw&feature=youtu.be.
2 Renata Dubini, UNHCR's Director for the Americas, stated that “UNHCR hopes to see the Americas as the first continent to end statelessness” (see UNHCR, “Belize Helps Everyone Have the Right to Say #IBelong,” www.unhcr.org/ibelong/belize-helps-everyone-have-the-right-to-say-ibelong/). In the speech mentioned in the previous endnote, then–High Commissioner Guterres similarly expressed that UNHCR's “hope is to see the Americas as the first continent to eradicate statelessness.”
3 The full name of the declaration, dated December 3, 2014 at Brasilia, is “A Framework for Cooperation and Regional Solidarity to Strengthen the International Protection of Refugees, Displaced and Stateless Persons in Latin America and the Caribbean” (see www.acnur.org/t3/fileadmin/Documentos/BDL/2014/9865.pdf).
4 Tobin, Catherine, “No Child is an Island: The Predicament of Statelessness for Children in the Caribbean,” International Human Rights Law Journal 1, no. 1 (2015), pp. 1–12 Google Scholar, quote from p. 2. The Americas Network on Nationality and Statelessness (Red ANA) made a similar assertion in their Annual Report 2015, p. 6, static1.squarespace.com/static/55eb3459e4b021abebfec2bd/t/570dc6aa04426215739ab87c/1460520637101/Red+ANA+Annual+Report+2015.
5 Quoted in UNHCR, The State of the World's Refugees: A Humanitarian Agenda, January 1997, ch. 6, www.unhcr.org/3eb7ba7d4.pdf.
6 Refer to Table 24, “Refugees, Asylum-Seekers, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Returnees (Refugees and IDPs), Stateless Persons, and Others of Concern to UNHCR by Region, 2014–2015,” in the UNHCR Global Trends 2015 report, www.unhcr.org/global-trends-2015.html.
7 For example, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) are among those international treaties that include the human right to a nationality.
8 Article 27 of the American Convention on Human Rights, www.oas.org/dil/treaties_B-32_American_Convention_on_Human_Rights.htm.
9 The contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) is recognized by twenty of the thirty-five member states of the Organization of American States (OAS). For a list of these countries, see p. 6 of ABC de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos at www.corteidh.or.cr/tablas/abccorte/abc/index.html#8/z.
10 Citation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Third Report On the Situation of Human Rights in Chile. Chapter IX. Right to Nationality,” February 11, 1977, www.cidh.oas.org/countryrep/Chile77eng/chap.9.htm.
11 IACtHR, “Case of the Girls Yean and Bosico v. Dominican Republic,” Judgment of September 8, 2005, www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_130_%20ing.pdf.
12 IACtHR, “Caso de Personas Dominicanas y Haitianas Expulsadas vs. República Dominicana,” Judgment of August 28, 2014, corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_282_esp.pdf.
13 The Commission's activities include hearing individual petitions, issuing reports, and declaring resolutions.
14 Their most recent Dominican Republic country report, entitled “Situation of Human Rights in the Dominican Republic” and dated December 31, 2015, is available at www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/DominicanRepublic-2015.pdf.
15 The OAS issued resolutions on the “Prevention and Reduction of Statelessness and Protection of Stateless Persons in the Americas” in 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2014.
16 This resolution, AG/RES.2826 (XLIV-O/14), from June 4, 2014, is available at www.oas.org/en/sla/dil/docs/AG-RES_2826_XLIV-O-14.pdf/.
17 The Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons (1994) predates the UN-level International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006).
18 Refer to chapter 6.3 on the Inter-American human rights system in Ilias Bantekas and Lutz Oette, International Human Rights Law and Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), especially footnote 163.
19 This quote comes from the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, adopted by the Colloquium on the International Protection of Refugees in Central America, Mexico, and Panama, held at Cartagena, Colombia, November 19–22, 1984, www.oas.org/dil/1984_cartagena_declaration_on_refugees.pdf.
20 The expanded definition held by the Organization of African Unity is found in the Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government, Addis Ababa, September 10, 1969, www.achpr.org/files/instruments/refugee-convention/achpr_instr_conv_refug_eng.pdf.
21 Other subregional meetings consisted of the Mercosur, Andean, and Mesoamerican countries during the Cartagena +30 round. The Mercosur meeting took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina from March 18–19; the Andean meeting was held in Quito, Ecuador from June 9–10; the Mesoamerican meeting occurred in Managua, Nicaragua from July 10–11; and the Caribbean subregional meeting took place in Grand Cayman from September 10–11 (all consultative meetings took place in 2014). I took part in the Caribbean consultative process as a civil society participant at the invitation of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
22 The 2010 Brasilia Declaration marked the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of UNHCR and the sixtieth and fiftieth anniversaries of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, respectively.
23 The Brasilia Declaration on the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons in the Americas, dated November 11, 2010, can be found at www.unhcr.org/protection/basic/4cdd3fac6/brasilia-declaration-protection-refugees-stateless-persons-americas-brasilia.html.
24 Citation from p. 17 of the Brazil Plan of Action (BPA).
25 Refer to endnote 16 to access the Declaration and BPA, specifically p. 17.
26 UNICEF, “Birth Registration in Latin America and the Caribbean: Closing the Gaps,” September 2016, p. 3 (quote from p. 1), data.unicef.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/BR-in-LAC-brochure_English-9_21-LR.pdf.
27 Ibid. Data comes from p. 3.
28 Gender discrimination also exists against men who are not married to the noncitizen mother with whom they had a child born abroad.
29 In less than fifteen years, the Bahamas has twice held a referendum on whether to allow for gender equality in the passing of citizenship from parent to child. In both 2002 and 2016 the Bahamian public voted against any changes to allow for equality in this arena.
30 “Generous” quotation from the Americas Network on Nationality and Statelessness (Red ANA) Annual Report 2015, p. 6. See endnote 4 above for citation information.
31 For example, to acquire citizenship at birth via jus soli in the Bahamas or Haiti, one of the child's parents must be a citizen (and it is unclear in the Haitian case whether a naturalized Haitian citizen parent can pass on her/his citizenship automatically in this manner). With regard to the Dominican Republic, which used to have unqualified jus soli until a constitutional amendment in 2010, the child's parent(s) must be legally in the country for said infant to acquire Dominican citizenship through birth on the soil.
32 Red ANA, Annual Report 2015, p. 6 (translation my own).
33 Most countries in the region, albeit to different degrees, share a history of ethnic cleansing, especially of indigenous peoples; the creation and maintenance of economic systems based upon the enslavement of Africans; and, as a result, subsequent postcolonial ethnic and racial stratification.
34 Citation from “UNHCR Announces Push to End Statelessness Worldwide by 2024” (see endnote 1 above).
35 UNHCR, “UNHCR Launches 10-Year Global Campaign to End Statelessness,” November 4, 2014, www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2014/11/545797f06/unhcr-launches-10-year-global-campaign-end-statelessness.html.
