Urgent solutions needed for Rohingyas: UNHCR
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi yesterday said solutions are urgently needed for millions without citizenship or at the risk of statelessness around the world, including the Rohingya, and minority populations at risk of statelessness in India’s Assam.
“Without these, we risk a deepening of the exclusion that already affects the lives of millions. This is why a redoubling of effort is crucial,” he said.
Bangladesh is hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas, most of whom entered Cox’s Bazar since August 25, 2017 amid military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Grandi warned that recent advances in the battle to end statelessness -- a leading cause of human rights deprivation for millions of people worldwide -- were being imperiled by a rise in damaging forms of nationalism.
In Geneva ahead of the opening of UNHCR’s annual executive committee meeting, Grandi said the growing number of countries taking action against statelessness meant the international community was nearing a point of critical mass in its efforts to stamp out statelessness for good.
“As recently as five years ago, public awareness of statelessness, and the harm it causes, was negligible. That’s changing, and today the prospect of ending statelessness entirely has never been closer,” he said.
And yet, Grandi said, the progress is far from assured. Damaging forms of nationalism, and the manipulation of anti-refugee and migrant sentiment are powerful currents internationally that risk reversing this progress.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, launched a global “#IBelong” Campaign in 2014 aimed at ending statelessness by 2024.
Since then, some 15 countries have acceded to the two major treaties on statelessness, the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, according to the UNHCR.
With additional accessions and other commitments expected this week, total accessions to the 1954 treaty could soon exceed the notable threshold of 100 countries.
In the first five years of the campaign, more than 220,000 stateless people acquired a nationality as a result of concerted national efforts motivated by the campaign, in places such as Kyrgyzstan, Kenya, Tajikistan, and Thailand.
In July this year, Kyrgyzstan became the first country in the world to announce the complete resolution of all known cases of statelessness.
Besides, since the campaign was launched, two countries -- Madagascar and Sierra Leone -- reformed their nationality laws to allow mothers to confer citizenship to their children on an equal footing with fathers.
However, 25 countries continue to make it difficult or impossible for mothers to confer citizenship to children, one of the leading causes of statelessness globally.
Not all nationality laws contain safeguards that ensure that no child is born stateless, hence statelessness can also be passed down from generation to generation.
Ending all forms of discrimination in nationality laws would help the international community live up to the commitment all states made when adopting the sustainable development agenda to “leave no one behind”.
Leading figures in the media, and human rights activists joined member state representatives in Geneva in a special session of UNHCR’s executive committee meeting known as the High-Level Segment on Statelessness, says the UNHCR.
Among those attending are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed; UNHCR goodwill ambassador Cate Blanchett; British TV journalist and presenter Anita Rani; formerly stateless refugee and activist Maha Mamo; and OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, Lamberto Zannier.
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