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Found 90 matches for statelessness
Statelessness, protection and equality
This policy brief provides a context and typology of stateless people, before examining the international law and jurisprudence as well as human rights discourse and policy that concern them. This brief draws attention to the increasingly narrow gap between the rights afforded to citizens and non-citizens and the need to address problems of statelessness as violations of international human rights norms (Van Waas 2008; Weissbrodt 2008). It argues that the persistent problems associated with statelessness noted in this brief are equally a matter for development agencies, for the denial and deprivation of nationality and the discriminatory exclusion of particular communities has a poverty-generating function. The brief concludes with recommendations to reduce and eliminate statelessness.
Migration and statelessness in the Dominican Republic - Interview with Bridget Wooding by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh
Bridget Wooding of the Observatorio Migrantes del Caribe, San Domingo speaks on Caribbean diasporas and statelessness.
Nationalism, cosmopolitanism and statelessness: an interview with Craig Calhoun
This interview with Professor Craig Calhoun expands on issues of nationalism and cosmopolitanism in relation to the question of statelessness. Since the 1990s, Calhoun has worked on nationalism, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism. For Calhoun, nations still matter despite post-national and cosmopolitan elaboration and repudiation of so-called parochial and provincialised identities like nation or national identity and citizenship. In this interview, Calhoun dis-cusses the material, political and cultural situations of the Kurds in the Middle East and the role of Kurdish nationalism in the context of statelessness. Calhoun finds class-based understanding of inequalities between the Kurds and their dominant others in the Middle East as problematic and incomplete since the cultural, political and material inequalities are intimately interlinked in rendering the Kurds to a subordinated position in the states they inhabit. The interview also engages with diasporic identities and examines how countries of residence can impinge on the identity formation of diasporas and how they obstruct or facilitate migrants translating their citizenship status into the right to have rights (Arendt). An important issue that Calhoun discusses is that there are both asymmetrical power relations between dominated (Kurdish) and dominating nationalisms (Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian) and within the same nationalisms.
Statelessness
A stateless person is someone who is not recognised as a national by any state. They therefore have no nationality or citizenship and are unprotected by national legislation, leaving them vulnerable in ways that most of us never have to consider. This latest issue of FMR includes 22 articles by academic, international and local actors debating the challenges faced by stateless people and the search for appropriate responses and solutions. The issue also includes 17 articles on other aspects of forced migration, among which are a mini-feature (comprising four articles) on refugee status determination and articles on European migration policies, Colombia, Ecuador, disaster IDPs, Europe-Africa cooperation, trafficking in Iran, cash grants for refugees and reproductive health care in emergencies.
Petitioning for Palestine: refugee appeals to international authorities
In the second half of the twentieth century, stateless Palestinian refugees regularly submitted petitions to international authorities, particularly the UN. In these petitions, the refugees demanded their rights and invoked the UN’s liberal internationalist discourse to assert the justice of their cause. This article explores what these petitions reveal about contentious politics among the Palestinian grassroots in the refugee camps. In so doing, it recasts Palestinian refugee camp communities as actors consciously engaged with international politics, and key drivers in internationalising the ‘Question of Palestine’. By unpacking the petitions’ internationalist aspects, the article also situates Palestinian refugee history within the broader context of post-war global governance. Finally, the analysis presented here challenges the state-centrism of existing historiography on petitioning, which examines the practice largely in relation to the growth of the state. By contrast, the case study of Palestinian petitioning shows that the practice can also be important in a setting of statelessness. This article therefore makes a series of contributions to understanding not only Palestinian political history, but also the practice of petitioning and the dynamics of post-war internationalism.
Rohingya in South East Asia: Opportunities for engagement
Including Australia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, this report maps the policy making environment and institutional architecture of Asian civil society organisations (CSOs) and communities engaged in issues of Rohingya statelessness and in supporting Rohingya refugees. The report documents and assesses the interests and capacities of these CSOs, and provides conclusions and recommendations to support development of stronger and more representative ADSP policy engagement and regional advocacy strategy.
Bedouin in Lebanon: the transformation of a way of life or an attitude?
The populations of the Middle East have experienced particularly rapid socio-economic change over the past 40 years, due largely to the consolidation of the nation-state after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the close of WWI. The basic social, political and cultural rights of the pastoral populations (the Bedouin) of this region have been largely ignored, however, in part due to their remoteness and inaccessibility, but also because of the very fact of their mobility and physical marginality. With a few exceptions - such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia - cultural differences between the mobile Bedouin and the settled urban and agrarian populations have translated over time into development of discriminated minorities. The Bedouin way of life has come to be regarded as backward and primitive; in some places their very authenticity as part of the nation-state has been questioned as they fail to ‘Modernise’ at the same pace as surrounding populations. Thus in Lebanon the majority of Bedouin are ‘stateless’ without papers and live beyond the ‘boundaries’ of government services. Their mobile way of life is largely a thing of the past, but their sense of tribal belonging remains strong. Their desire for nationality papers reflects a wish to end their marginalisation and statelessness and be able to access government services.
The rights of non-citizens to membership
Book description: Statelessness in the European Union draws together original research from over one hundred interviews in Estonia, France, Slovenia and the United Kingdom to provide one of the first comparative accounts of the de facto or de jure stateless populations in the European Union. It blends legal, political and empirical research to examine how non-citizens without secure status, in some cases established undocumented migrants and their descendants, manage their lives in four European Union member states. Normative and legal analyses of the practical meaning of basic human rights are combined with a groundbreaking investigation of the obstacles that prevent people from accessing essential services. Contrasting the situation of Europe's stateless now with that examined by Arendt over fifty years ago, it considers proposals for the future security of Europe's stateless people.
Introduction: Bedouin in Lebanon: Migration, Settlement, Health Care and Policy
The populations of the Middle East have experienced particularly rapid socio-economic change over the past 40 years, due largely to the consolidation of the nation-state after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the close of WWI. The basic social, political and cultural rights of the pastoral populations (the Bedouin) of this region have been largely ignored, however, in part due to their remoteness and inaccessibility, but also because of the very fact of their mobility and physical marginality. With a few exceptions - such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia - cultural differences between the mobile Bedouin and the settled urban and agrarian populations have translated over time into development of discriminated minorities. The Bedouin way of life has come to be regarded as backward and primitive; in some places their very authenticity as part of the nation-state has been questioned as they fail to ‘Modernise’ at the same pace as surrounding populations. Thus in Lebanon the majority of Bedouin are ‘stateless’ without papers and live beyond the ‘boundaries’ of government services. Their mobile way of life is largely a thing of the past, but their sense of tribal belonging remains strong. Their desire for nationality papers reflects a wish to end their marginalisation and statelessness and be able to access government services.
Afghanistan’s displaced people: 2014 and beyond
2014 is widely seen as marking a watershed for Afghanistan with its legacy of 35 years of conflict and one of the world’s largest populations in protracted displacement. International military forces are being withdrawn and the country is ‘in transition’, and there is still considerable uncertainty about the capacity of the country to address the challenges of return, integration and reintegration, protection, access to rights, and continuing displacement. FMR 46 contains 21 articles on Afghanistan, plus a mini-feature on Statelessness.
Beware states piercing holes into citizenship
This debate piece is part of a EUDO CITIZENSHIP Forum Debate working paper edited by Audrey Macklin and Rainer Baubock, and titled 'The return of banishment: do the new denationalisation policies weaken citizenship?'. In this debate, several authors discuss the growing trend in Europe and North America of using denationalisation of citizens as a counter-terrorism strategy. The deprivation of citizenship status, alongside passport revocation, and denial of re-admission to citizens returning from abroad, manifest the securitisation of citizenship. Britain leads in citizenship deprivation, but in 2014, Canada passed new citizenship-stripping legislation and France’s Conseil Constitutionnel recently upheld denaturalisation of dual citizens convicted of terrorism-related offences. In the wake of the ongoing crisis in Iraq and Syria, assorted legislators in Austria, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States have expressed interest in enacting (or reviving) similar legislation. The contributors to the Forum Debate consider the normative justification for citizenship deprivation from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. There is relatively little disagreement among commentators about the limited instrumental value of citizenship revocation in enhancing national security, and more diversity in viewpoint about its significance for citizenship itself. The contributors discuss the characterisation of citizenship as right versus privilege, the relevance of statelessness and dual nationality, the relative merits of citizenship versus human rights as normative framework, and the expansiveness of banishment itself as a concept. Kickoff contribution and rejoinder by Audrey Macklin. Comments by Peter Spiro, Peter H. Schuck, Christian Joppke, Vesco Paskalev, Bronwen Manby, Kay Hailbronner, Rainer Bauböck, Linda Bosniak, Daniel Kanstroom, Matthew J. Gibney, Ruvi Ziegler, Saskia Sassen and Jo Shaw. Type of Access: openAccess
Deprivation of Citizenship through a Political Lens
About 'The World's Stateless Report 2020: Deprivation of Nationality': Othering is on the rise around the world. Linked to the rise of nationalism, it is among the most pressing problems of the 21st century. In this era of rising authoritarianism, growth of the security state, increasing populism, xenophobia and racism, citizenship is under threat in ways not seen for generations. As more states instrumentalise nationality and treat it as a privilege that can be taken away, members of minority communities, human rights defenders, dissidents and suspected terrorists are all more likely to be stripped of their nationality – facing acute human rights depravations as a result. The growing (mis)use of citizenship stripping powers to target some, undermines the sanctity of citizenship for all. This edition of the flagship report of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, The World’s Stateless 2020 explores the issue of citizenship deprivation. Various experts and organisations have contributed material – essays, interviews, refections and more – collectively forming a truly interdisciplinary view on the subject. The report also includes the Principles on Deprivation of Nationality as a National Security Measure. As with every edition, the report also offers an overview of the state of statelessness globally in 2020.