GUEST POST: Stories of Statelessness - Burma, the Dominican Republic and Kenya

What would you do if you were a citizen of no country? If the place you were born disavowed your tie there? For the 12 million people who are stateless worldwide, this struggle for a homeland and all the rights that being a citizen somewhere entails, is all too real. Stateless people are not quite refugees; they may have lived in a country for generations, but they are denied citizenship and rights by governments who insist they belong somewhere else. Yet this global crisis is under-reported in mainstream outlets. For photographer Greg Constantine, statelessness "is one of the most complex, politically sensitive and devastating human rights issues most people don’t know about.”

In the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting iBook In Search of Home, Constantine and reporter Stephanie Hanes teamed up to try to shed light on a global phenomenon. They examined statelessness in Kenya, Burma and the Dominican Republic, mixing interactive maps, photography and reporting to create an immersive experience.

One story they tell in the iBook is from the Dominican Republic, where Haitian immigrants have forged a home working in the DR’s now-collapsed sugar industry.  The work can be dangerous (sugar cane is so sharp, it can cut through human skin) with meager pay. For three generations, these workers have raised families in the Dominican Republic, but even their children who are Dominican-born with identities more Dominican than Haitian, are denied full citizenship.  

In the Dominican Republic, to be born on the nation’s land (jus soli or “right of soil”) is not enough for citizenship – you must be jus sanguinis or “right of blood.” The country’s law, Circular 17, enacted in 2007 and based on jus sanguinis, obfuscates the stateless sugar workers’ ability to get an education and a job. Even a name is an indication of “otherness.” Constantine and Hanes interviewed one woman, Jean Joseph, a bright student of Haitian descent with a Dominican birth certificate, who cannot go to law school because the Dominican government will not issue her the necessary documents due to her “funny” last name. 

Because of the complex realities of statelessness, Bangkok-based Constantine felt strongly about the need to extend past the limits of traditional journalism. “Because I believe so much in the importance of the stories I work on, I refuse to accept the limitations of traditional publishing these days, which is why we have to explore as many creative and strategic ways for getting the work out there as possible. I think the possibilities to tell robust, multi-dimensional stories through e-books are endless.”

Hanes agrees: "The e-book format allows for far more nuance and background information than a traditional print piece. There is an ability to truly incorporate photos, maps, and historical information. Overall, it allows for an excitingly textured new way of story-telling.”

The resulting iBook is a work that uses design to inform and raise awareness about statelessness, where the stories of aspiring Haitian-Dominican baseball players are seamlessly woven with photographs of children playing in abandoned sugar cane fields. Subsequently, the lives of women like Jean Joseph come alive through a tapestry of words and photographs in a project that was recently named one of the best Tablet/Mobile Delivery projects of the year by the National Press Photographers Association.

The iBook is part of a larger effort at the Pulitzer Center to increase media literacy and awareness of global issues, while creating new income streams for independent journalists who cover these crucial stories. In Search of Home is available for purchase in the iTunes store.

By Caroline D’Angelo and Jennifer Nguyen for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

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About the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting:  The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting supports in-depth coverage of international affairs, focusing on topics that have been under-reported or not reported at all. Its honors include an Emmy for new approaches to news and documentaries and awards from the National Press Foundation, the National Press Club, and the Society of Professional Journalists. The Center’s education programs engage directly with high school and university students, building a constituency among younger audiences for quality global news coverage. To learn more, please visit http://pulitzercenter.org.

Statelessness in 2012: one step forward, two steps back?

The year 2011 ended on an unmistakable high in terms of momentum to address statelessness worldwide, with the issue somewhat stealing the show at UNHCR’s December Inter-ministerial meeting, as one state after another affirmed the importance of tackling the problem and pledged to take action. Entering the new year, things were still looking promising with a number of countries in Africa, Europe and the Americas already making good on their promises and acceding to one or other - or both - of the statelessness conventions, or taking steps to introduce a statelessness determination procedure in their legal system. 

Meanwhile, in early 2012, the newly elected Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, indicated his intention to continue his predecessor's work in highlighting problems of statelessness across the continent and expressed a particular interest in raising the issue of stateless children. Europe also saw the launch of the European Network on Statelessness at the start of June 2012: the first significant regional initiative by civil society to collaborate closely in order to 'strengthen the often unheard voice of stateless persons and to advocate for full respect of their human rights'. And Slovenia's "erased" have just won a landmark victory before the European Court of Human Rights' Grand Chamber, which ruled that the government's deletion of some 18,000 names from the civil registry books in 1992 - which left people both stateless and classed as illegal residents - was a violation of the right to family life (article 8 ECHR) and the principle of non-discrimination (article 14 ECHR). This case, Kuric v. Slovenia, provides crucial confirmation of the European court's competence to rule on matters relating to the enjoyment of nationality - given the right circumstances of the case - and its interest in acting on statelessness.

Each of the developments noted above - and more besides - constitutes an important step forwards in addressing statelessness and demonstrates that the issue is now, at last, receiving significant international attention. Yet, if we flip the coin over, the other side exposes some extremely disquieting statelessness-related developments. From Sudan/South Sudan, UAE, Syria, Dominican Republic, Libya and elsewhere comes news of emerging cases of statelessness and/or further stagnation or deterioration of the situation of stateless people. 

Most worrying of all - and distressing enough to take the shine off any global efforts towards the resolution of statelessness - is the news from Myanmar (Burma). For several weeks now, reports pouring out of the country have brought word of an ever-worsening situation for the stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar's Rakhine state, the Rohingya. What was initially described as a flare of ethnic tension has since deteriorated into shocking reports of killings, the destruction of tens of thousands of homes and the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Those attempting to flee the violence by sea are meeting perhaps even greater risks on their perilous journey, with reports of helicopters firing on boats full of these stateless refugees (including children). And those that do make it to shore in neighbouring Bangladesh being turned back out to sea in their overloaded boats with only a small supply of fresh of water and rice or bread as this news footage shows. 

While the recent moves towards a more democratic state have cast a positive light on the future of Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi's recent international tour - a highlight of which was her acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to her in 1991 - has inspired hope in many, the situation of the stateless Rohingya does not look set to benefit from these developments any time soon. Indeed, Suu Kyi herself has declared that she "does not know" if the Rohingya should be regarded as Burmese and now a group of eight ethnic parties allied with Myanmar's opposition movement has rejected the idea that the Rohingya should be recognised as one of the country's ethnic minorities. There is no doubt that the current treatment of the Rohingya both inside Myanmar and as hundreds seek protection abroad is casting a deep and worrying shadow on international developments in the field of statelessness in 2012. 

Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme