Kyrgyz lawyer wins UN prize for battling statelessness
GENEVA: A human rights lawyer who fought to end the “ghost” status of stateless people in Kyrgyzstan, was on Wednesday named the winner of the UN refugee agency’s prestigious Nansen award.
The UNHCR hailed Azizbek Ashurov for helping Kyrgyzstan to become the world’s first country to end statelessness, working through his organisation Ferghana Valley Lawyers Without Borders (FVLWB).
He has helped more than 10,000 people gain Kyrgyz nationality after they became stateless following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the agency said in a statement.
“I cannot stand still when I see an injustice,” Ashurov said in the statement. “Statelessness is injustice.
“A stateless person is not recognised by any state,” he said. “They are like ghosts. They exist physically, but they don’t exist on paper.”
Thanks to his work, around 2,000 children have been handed a right to education, and a future in which they will be free to travel, marry and work, UNHCR said.
“Azizbek Ashurov’s story is one of great personal resolve and tenacity,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in the statement.
“His commitment to the cause of eradicating statelessness in Kyrgyzstan... is a compelling example of the power of an individual to inspire and mobilise collective action,” he added.
Ashurov was motivated by his own family’s struggle to achieve Kyrgyz citizenship after arriving from Uzbekistan.
During the Soviet era, there were no internal borders, and people moved across Central Asia with only internal documentation.
But after the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, “many people became stranded across newly established borders, often with nowinvalid Soviet passports or no means to prove where they were born,” the UNHCR noted.