My name is Christina van Kuijck, I’m currently
studying 3 masters (Human Rights Law, Criminal Law and War Studies) and started
my internship at the Statelessness Programme in September 2013. The reason why
I applied for it was because I previously follow the course “Nationality,
Statelessness and Human Rights”. It had such a big impact on me, that I wanted
to contribute to the world in this area.
I’m an intern now for 6 weeks and each week I’m
more positive I made the right choice. Besides preparing the Global Forum on
Statelessness, which will be held in September 2014 in the Hague, my tasks
include raising awareness on statelessness. One of the projects I’ve been busy
with is the School Project for primary and secondary schools. After preparing
the materials on nationality and the link with statelessness, we had the
opportunity to give a lecture on the 4th of October at the “Onze
Lieve Vrouwe Lyceum” in Breda (the Netherlands) to children of the third grade
(3 VWO, 14 year-olds). A researcher and another intern from the Statelessness
Programme – Zahra and Sangita – accompanied me.
When I arrived there, I was very nervous. I
have previously given private lessons to people between the age of 10 – 21, but
never to an entire class of 30 persons. I was also a little bit afraid that the
children would have difficulty following a whole class in English. I didn’t
need to be afraid or nervous at all. The students were really enthusiastic and
active in the lecture. When they absolutely didn’t know how to explain
themselves in English, they would use Dutch.
We started the lecture by asking the students
what nationality is. Though none of the students had another nationality than
the Dutch one, some of them had relatives that do have another nationality. We
explained them that nationality entails both identity and membership. By asking
the students different questions with the nationalities they mentioned (for
example Germany and Italy) they were able to understand what identity means. It
was interesting to see what national stereotypes came out - one of the students
stated, for instance, that "Italian
women are very bossy". Afterwards the students gave some examples of forms
of membership – one of them raised the school as a kind of "club"
that they are members of, showing that they were one step ahead of us since we
wanted to ask them what their do's and don'ts (rights and duties) were as members of the
class and the school. The next question was: what if you have no nationality
and what is the problem? The students immediately answered: you don't have any
rights and any duties. This paved the way to move on to the next question: the
explanation of statelessness.
Zahra took over from here: She showed a video
of stateless persons and the students were very interested in what they saw.
Zahra asked the students whether they knew how they acquired nationality, and
all of them gave the correct answers: the land bond through birth or naturalisation,
and the blood bond through relatives or marriage. I was also impressed at how
the students intuitively suggested that a foundling should acquire nationality
by one way or the other, for example by giving a foundling the nationality
where he was born, or found, or the nationality of his (adoptive) parents.
After explaining naturalisation, most of the students stated that they would
want another nationality because it would be easier for them in the future to
find jobs (and because according to them, the Netherlands is too cold and small
for them). Zahra then arrived at the loss of nationality, by offeringdifferent
real -life examples.
Sangita took over to explain the regulation of
nationality in the Netherlands and talked about an article in the newspaper of
a stateless person in their own country. The students were quite shocked that
this also happens in their own country. Finally, Zahra showed the international
regulations and explained two cases of statelessness – the Rohingya in Myanmar
and Bidoon in Kuwait.
The students showed a lot of concern towards
the problem and understood everything correctly. The teacher, Jos van Schilt,
was very enthusiastic and gave us some positive feedback and has offered to
help with the materials and different exercises for the School Project.
It was a very positive experience for me, soon
we will be able to teach upper secondary classes and compare the materials that
we have used and the way students respond to the topic. Currently I’m working
with Jos van Schilt on a paper about nationality and statelessness education as
one of the responses to statelessness. I hope to raise awareness all over the
world with the School Project, and finish the materials before the end of the
year in three languages (English, Spanish and Dutch). I’m very happy with this
internship, as it gives me an opportunity to explore the law in a different
way, not only by receiving education, but also by giving it to others.
Christina van Kuijck – intern at the
Statelessness Programme
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