It is now just three
months short of a year since UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, hailed a “quantum leap” in global efforts to tackle statelessness
at a Ministerial Meeting
organised by UNHCR in Geneva to mark the 50th Anniversary of the 1961
Statelessness Convention. At this meeting 61 countries made
statelessness-related pledges and 33 states committed to accede or take steps to
accede to either or both conventions.
In the European context it is welcome that Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova
and Portugal have since ratified both the Statelessness Conventions. Some
states are in the process of doing so or are taking other measures to improve
the protection of stateless persons. However, a number of states who made
pledges are yet to take any concrete action.
Moreover, despite the fact that soon almost all EU states will have
ratified the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, only a small
handful have in place dedicated and effective procedures for identifying
stateless persons. Having such mechnanisms in place is a critical first step
for states to comply with their obligations under the 1954 Convention and
international human rights law.
Looking ahead, several
upcoming dates in the international calendar provide an early opportunity for
states and other stakeholders to take stock of progress in implementing state
pledges to tackle statelessness, and to focus attention and renew effort where
this has not happened.
The first
such opportunity arises next week with the High-Level Rule of Law meeting
during the General Assembly to be held in New York on the 24th September 2012. This
forum is clearly relevant because the rule of law is undermined when
individuals are made stateless and denied full equality before the law as a
result of discrimination or arbitrary decision making.
Refugees
International is marking this occasion by issuing a public
statement signed by dozens of NGOs (including the European Network on Statelessness)
which urges member states to take advantage of pledge accession to the
Statelessness Conventions, to introduce procedures to identify and protect
stateless persons subject to their jurisdiction and to amend nationality laws
that discriminate against women, children and specific populations based on
ethnicity, religion, or other impermissible factors.
Later in the week the focus switches from New York to
Geneva for the Committee on the Rights of the Child 2012 Day
of General Discussion on 28 September which focuses on “The Rights of All Children in
the Context of International Migration”. This discussion day provides an
important opportunity to raise concerns about childhood statelessness, to
provide documentation to the Committee in the context of its review of reports
by State parties to the Convention and to push for a General Comment on Article
7 on the Convention of the Rights of the Child (the right of every child to be
registered and to acquire a nationality). UNHCR has produced a leaflet which explains the link between
Article 7 and the 1961 Statelessness Convention.
The meeting of UNHCR’s Executive
Committee early next month (1-5 October), also in Geneva, presents another
forum for states to critically review
their progress in implementing the commitments they made at the Ministerial Meeting
last year.
All
these meetings also provide civil society with an invaluable opportunity to
evaluate what this means for their own campaigning and awareness-raising efforts.
The European Network on Statelessness is organising an event in Budapest on
19-21 November to bring together many of its new members from across Europe in
order to plan coordinated action. With over 35 new members having joined since
the Network’s launch in June, we hope to be increasingly better placed to make
a telling contribution.
Chris Nash is International Protection Policy
Coordinator at Asylum Aid and Coordinator of the European Network on
Statelessness (ENS). For further information about the Network contact info@statelessness.eu
This blog first appeared on the ENS website - to sign up for future ENS
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