It has been two weeks since I moved to Madrid for my PhD in Advanced
Studies of Human Rights in the University of Carlos III. If a year ago I was told
that I would make up my mind to do a PhD, I would probably never believe it.
But here I am, in Madrid, ready to start this adventure.
However, back then the biggest surprise for me would have been the area
that I have now chosen for my research and….it is statelessness! And of course,
frankly speaking, the reason for this is the Statelessness Programme. I have
met Laura and Zahra in October 2011 during my interview for the internship position
at the Statelessness Programme. From then on and till now, statelessness is a
topic that fascinates me the most out of the wide range of unsettled issues in
international law. I have heard of statelessness before during one of my
general lectures on international law in the Institute of International
Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, but I have never
thought of choosing it as my field of research until I got that internship
position at the Statelessness Programme. That is when I learnt that there is a shocking
amount of stateless people in the world in the twenty first century (!), discovered
the reasons of why people are stateless and much more. I have also attended an
extremely interesting and informative course on Nationality, Statelessness and
Human Rights given by Dr. Laura van Waas, the Senior Researcher and Manager of
the Statelessness Programme. Moreover, I have written my Master Thesis in the
area of statelessness, entitled “Revocation
of nationality from Dominicans of Haitian descent in light of the Bueno v.
Dominican Republic case”, supervised by Laura.
Looking back, I must say it was quite a “statelessness year” and as it
seems, there are about three or four more to come. I have just started my PhD
in Spain, thus many things have to still be arranged and organized, however I
can already reveal the theme that I am planning to do my research on and it is:
“Access to basic human rights of stateless people and their implementation in
the example of statelessness determination procedure in Spain”. There is still
a long way to go, but I can feel the first steps already and I must say it’s
very exciting.
Thus, I would like to thank Statelessness Programme, Laura and Zahra for
opening the world of statelessness for me and letting me in “behind the scenes”
of the “statelessness world”. I cannot wait to start my research and make my
modest contribution to the treasury of researches in the area of statelessness.
Valeria Cherednichenko, former intern of the Statelessness Programme (2011-2012), now doing a PhD in Advanced Studies in Human Rights at the Institute of Human Rights Bartolomé de las Casas, Charles III University of Madrid
