No state, no rights, the plight of 12 million people who don’t exist
Around the world today there are millions of people who are not recognized as citizens
of any country. On paper they don’t exist anywhere. They are people without a nationality.
They are stateless.
UNHCR estimates that there are up to 12 million stateless
people in the world, but defining exact numbers is hugely problematic. Inconsistent
reporting combined with different definitions of statelessness means the true scale
of the problem remains elusive.
“These people are in desperate need of help
because they live in a nightmarish legal limbo,” says António Guterres, the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees. “This makes them some of the most excluded people in the
world. Apart from the misery caused to the people themselves, the effect of marginalizing
whole groups of people across generations creates great stress in the societies they
live in and is sometimes a source of conflict.”
UNHCR has launched a campaign
to shed light on this often elusive issue – aimed at decreasing the number of stateless
worldwide. The campaign comes just days before the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Convention
on the Reduction of Statelessness on August 30, 2011.
“There are numerous causes
of statelessness, many of them entrenched in legalities, but the human consequences
can be dramatic”, says UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards. “Because stateless people are
technically not citizens of any country, they are often denied basic rights and access
to employment, housing, education, and health care. They may not be able to own property,
open a bank account, get married legally, or register the birth of a child. Some face
long periods of detention, because they cannot prove who they are or where they come
from”.
While the full scope of statelessness across the globe is only just
becoming known, UNHCR has found the problem is particularly acute in South East Asia,
Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. However pockets of statelessness
exist throughout the world and it's a problem that crosses all borders and walks of
life. Listen to Emer McCarthy’s full interview with Adrian Edwards: