Matt Robinson and Tyler Harbottle: Statelessness (joint paper outline)

Background:

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UHNCR) estimates there are 12 million stateless persons world wide.[1] Stateless persons generally lack the basic rights afforded to nationals of their host state; they are often refused the right to work, the right to basic education, legal protections, and health and other state services. Stateless persons are effectively pushed to the margins of society and prevented from reaching their full human potential.

It is often the case that people become stateless due to political or racial motivations, but it can also occur simply because of legislative gaps or inconsistencies between or within countries. It is an issue that affects people in developed and developing countries, and it spares neither adults nor children.

Existing Conventions:

Two early international conventions are directed at preventing or supporting stateless persons: the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, 1954, and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. To date, there are approximately 65 and 35 parties[2], respectively, to the conventions.[3] Canada is not a party to the former, but has ratified the latter.

Bearing in mind the limited number of signatories and ratifying parties to the two conventions, there has been very little specific international action to reduce this issue.

Case Studies:

Nubians in Kenya

Roma in Europe

What should be done?:

Every nation has an obligation to take meaningful steps to end this issue. We will contend that certain international mechanisms, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, include Articles that demand signatory nations recognize or at the very least accord a measure of rights to stateless men, women and children.[4] This section will develop the rationale for our recommendations.

Recommendations:

We will make two key recommendations based on the guiding principle that all countries have the responsibility to act on behalf of stateless persons:

Ratification of existing conventions relating to stateless people

We will recommend that all countries that have not signed and ratified the relevant conventions on statelessness do so immediately.

Accompanying our paper will be a draft private member’s bill for the House of Commons, which would implement the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons in Canada. 

United Nations Citizenship / Global Citizenship:

We will recommend the development of a new class of international citizenship -- guided by principles relating to the treatment of refugees -- that will extend basic rights and protections to stateless persons. 

We will argue that the United Nations has established a precedent of acting on behalf of stateless persons (e.g. The United Nations Compensation Commission’s treatment of stateless claimants).

 

[1] http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c155.html. Statistics on the actual number of stateless persons range widely. UNHCR has relied on this figure in recent public communications material.

[2] Number to be confirmed.

[3] For reference, there are 192 members of the United Nations.

[4] Every member nation of the UN with the exception of the United States and Somalia has signed this convention. Case study countries Kenya and

Comments

[Hannah van Voorthuysen]

I think this is a really interesting topic! Regarding your case studies they both involve groups that have some degree of international recognition or acknowledgement. I wonder if it would be better to also look at a case study examining an individual who has fallen between the bureaucratic cracks in BC. This could be linked to the international context, for example in the case of Adrian Dragan: http://users.resist.ca/noii-van.resist.ca/adrian_dragan.html - a Roma refugee imprisoned in Vancouver.

[Sam]

There's a paradox in your topic that might bear careful consideration, namely, that if the state intervenes on behalf of a stateless people, are they still stateless? I'm not just trying to be clever. Take a gander at Slovenia's legal protections for Roma: http://www.uvn.gov.si/en/legal_acts/legal_protection_of_the_roma_ethnic_community_in_slovenia/ You'll see provisions for "development programs of the settlements" in the communities. Without any knowledge of how Slovenia is administering these laws, I can't evaluate their efficacy. But we should ask what a government might expect of a people as a condition of these legal protections. If the solutions to problems inspired by statelessness include assimilation, then what good, ultimately, are those solutions?

Obviously protections aren't a form of welfare. But I could imagine that line becoming blurred in some situations.

[Mo]

Hi,
Just a consideration. As I'm sure you know, the UNHCR currently does not class any statelessness person as a refugee because they necessarily require, by definition, a potential state to be repatriated to. While I know you don't need another case study, this is why, for example, the Palestinians living in countries bordering Israel are not officially refugees, and are not addressed at all by the UNHCR (they have their own sub agency for relief). Perhaps, as a side project, the UNHCR could be petitioned to expand their understanding of 'refugee' to incude those who have nowhere to return to.

[Pablo Antezana]

This is a very interesting topic.

My only suggestion would be to emphasize on the dilemma of statelessness from the point of view of unwanted or undervalued minorities.

Here is a complete link to the Stateless Nations and Minority Peoples in Europe:

http://www.eurominority.eu/version/eng/

[Frank Halderman]

Homelessness in Vancouver. I have talked some homeless men in Vancouver and found, my non-medical opinion, that they could be suffering from schizophrenia. I wonder if the BC government is not unique in its decision, a number of years ago, to close portions of Riverview Hospital, which cast a number of mentally ill individuals onto the streets of the lower mainland. Here is an article from June 2010 that talks about homelessness and schitzophrenia.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/06/22/MentalIllnessHomeless/

[Scott Goosenberg]

Do you plan on making distinctions between internally displaced peoples (IDP), forced migration as a result of an ecological/political catastrophe, and deliberate immigrations who get lost in limbo in holding cells of immigration centers in countries? This kind of differentiation could go a long way in deducing the rights of stateless peoples, as the catalyst is quite context-dependent -- esp. vis-a-vis IDPs in particular. Given that IDPs are subjugated to a particular state but not given rights -- such as Palestinians kept in refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon while being treated as second-class citizens -- it seems particularly important to take these individuals into account, as it will add nuance to your argument. If one lives in a state, but is not afforded the rights of the country's citizens, are they by extension "stateless" or something in between that needs to be fleshed out?

[Michael Byers]

You probably already know about this article, but just in case:

Corrigan, Edward C “The Legal Debate in Canada on the Protection of Stateless Individuals under the 1951 Geneva Convention” (2003) volume 23 part 2 Immigration Law Reporter.