UN: 3 million stateless deserve nationality

GENEVA: At least three million people worldwide are stateless, most of them minorities, a status that deprives them of an identity, rights and often jobs, the United Nations refugee agency said yesterday.

It said Muslim Rohingya in Buddhist-majority Myanmar form the world’s biggest stateless minority, with some 600,000 having fled violence and repression since August and taken refuge in Bangladesh.

In a report, “This is Our Home — Stateless Minorities and their Search for Citizenship”, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called on governments to end the discriminatory practice by 2024.

“If you live in this world without a nationality, you are without an identity, you are without documentation, without the rights and entitlements that we take for granted... having a job, having education, knowing that your child belongs somewhere,” UNHCR International Protection Division director Carol Batchelor said.

UNHCR said governments should give nationality to people born on their territory if they would otherwise be stateless, and facilitate naturalisation for longtime stateless residents.

Other stateless groups, many of whom have lived for generations in their homelands, include many Syrian Kurds, the Karana of Madagascar, Roma in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the Pemba of Kenya, the report said.

“We can concretely say there are over three million identified stateless persons, but that would certainly not be the scope in totality. We need to ensure that there is not a deliberate, arbitrary exclusion or deprivation of nationality,” Batchelor said.

On whether the Rohingya fell into the category of those deliberately excluded and deprived of nationality, Batchelor said: “We can only look at the result... Myanmar has a nationality law. It outlines categories of persons considered to be citizens. The Rohingya are not on that list.” Reuters