Life is Waiting…

Remember the predicaments of Tom Hanks’ character Viktor Navorski in The Terminal? After a coup in his East European country Krakozhia, Navorski wasn’t allowed to arrive or depart JFK airport until his formal status had been determined, and meanwhile was to remain stationary, unable to participate in society, in the comparable legal quagmire of a stateless person in no man’s land.

The real story is happening with Igor Skrijevski (51) and Galina Skrijevskaia (49), who fled to the United States from what was in 1990 still the Soviet Union. Lawful stay in the US was eventually denied, but meanwhile the USSR they left behind ceased to exist and the couple proved unable to be deported back to this country that had now disappeared. An uphill struggle with bureaucracy for recognition and admittance followed, ultimately continuing to this day from that ill-defined legal space in between countries where stateless persons are relegated to. They’ve been passing time in waiting rooms like airports, holding cells, and asylum centres; the non-places where non-persons often end up. After being sent to Ukraine, which in its turn tried to return them, they became stranded in the Netherlands. Sitting in waiting, now nearly eight years ‘delayed’.

The legal perspective

Regardless of possibly violated US obligations (e.g. under the HRC’s understanding of a person’s right to enter his ‘own country’ under Article 12(4) ICCPR), the pertinent question is what the country where the Skrijevskis currently are ought to do with them. This question became most pressing after the Netherlands rejected their asylum claims and moved to expel them under the EU-Ukraine readmission agreement – a move which the highest Dutch appeals court for such decisions found unobjectionable.

One expects to find answers in the 1954 Convention which aims to protect stateless people. While it does offer the Skrijevskis some important rights as administrative assistance and identity papers, many are conditional upon lawful stay, such as access to the labour market, social security, travel documents, and protection from expulsion. Yet at the moment there is no obligation to grant lawful stay. Although implementation of a determination procedure would briefly help (see paragraph 20, UNHCR Guideline #2), without a corresponding right of residence for verified stateless persons little would improve. The UNHCR therefore recommends a (temporary) residence permit as good practice – echoed by the UN Secretary-General – unless protection is realistically available elsewhere or when statelessness results from voluntary renunciation as a matter of convenience or choice (Guideline #3). These two exceptions could be called the ‘alternative’ and ‘unwilling’ obstacles to residency. In the first exception a transitory arrangement is appropriate, in the second involuntary return would not be ruled out. However, the UNHCR narrowly interprets voluntary renunciation and distinguishes this from the ‘loss of nationality through failure to comply with formalities, including where the individual is aware of the relevant requirements and still chooses to ignore them’ (paragraph 44 and accompanying footnote, Guideline #1). By the many references to the couple’s personal responsibility and their uncooperativeness in obtaining Ukrainian nationality, choosing to give up a nationality or choosing to refuse one, passively or actively, might be the same in the eyes of the Netherlands (or the UK, cf. Al-Jedda). Both exceptions would then apply. In their defence, after almost sixteen years of working and living in New York they understandably feel American. Their business and social life is there. They also connect Ukraine with the place they fled from persecutions. Lastly, it’s conceivable that they’ve been advised to remain stateless in order to increase their chances of gaining readmission to the US.

The Skrijevkis expose an uncomfortable challenge in addressing statelessness. Can people choose to become or remain unnecessarily stateless, and if so, are States justified in attaching the consequence of withholding certain rights? Does the right to have a nationality mean there’s no obligation to have one, just like the right to health doesn’t mean one can’t choose to live unhealthy? Here is not the place to go into this in detail, but in short I think the answer to the last question should be no. The reasoning in Pretty v UK can be applied whereby the right to life emphasises a State’s obligation to protect it, rather than an individual’s discretion to reject it – the same could be true for nationality.

A short comment is warranted on other possible obligations aside from those under the Statelessness Conventions. In DCI v the Netherlands, the European Committee of Social Rights held that foreign children are entitled to certain rights under the Revised European Social Charter, whatever their residence status, hence despite the exclusion clause in the Appendix, paragraph 1 to such effect. In CEC v the Netherlands, the right to food, clothing and shelter are now being invoked for undocumented adults. If the claim is upheld, it could bring such rights into reach for stateless persons. Although they receive separate treatment in paragraph 3, excluding them when the lawful residence requirement would be waived for aliens is hardly tenable in light of the 1954 Convention’s core principle, codified in Article 7, which prohibits treating stateless persons worse than foreigners who do possess a nationality. Especially when the second requirement of belonging to contracting Parties is also ignored, perhaps because of the progressive insight that fundamental human rights shouldn’t be based on reciprocity. Whether stateless persons could benefit from the Charter remains to be seen though.

Finally, an important question remains as to what sort of protection the ECHR obliges States to provide. In this regard, a potentially important case now pending is Dabetić v Italy. Dabetić became stateless after Yugoslavia dissolved and his nationality was ‘erased’. His complaint was previously declared inadmissible in Kurić v Slovenia for not exhausting domestic remedies, because in the Court’s view he had failed to express any wish to reside in Slovenia. His presumed unwillingness to obtain a solution elsewhere makes the case nearly identical to the Skrijevskis. If the Court will find Italy in breach of (any of) Articles 6, 8, 13 and 14 ECHR, by withholding statelessness status, a (temporary) residency permit and the more favourable treatment provided to refugees, it will have significant consequences for Dutch obligations. It will be interesting whether the Court could clear the ‘alternative’ and ‘unwilling’ obstacles through independent operation of ECHR standards.

Address unknown

In 2011, a Dutch television programme organised a protest at the Skrijevskis’ behest at the US embassy in The Hague. While the reporter saw his ambitions and patience run into a bureaucratic wall, Igor and Galina stood by carrying signs with ‘return to sender’. Standing in waiting, with quiet accusation in their defeated looks. Igor and Galina are among more than ten million persons frequently treated by States as undeliverable parcels, attempted to be sent back and forth. A solution to statelessness requires political will, but above all prevention by sound nationality laws. Drawing attention to the issue and talking about stateless persons is a way to help, to grant them recognition and to make them more visible.

Martijn Keeman, Statelessness Programme Research Clinic participant 2013-2014

Stateless people in the Netherlands deserve better

To hold no nationality at all, have no passport and enjoy no right to vote anywhere: that is something special. But not unheard of. Worldwide, over 10 million people are stateless and there are also cases here in the Netherlands. For more than fifty years, the Netherlands has also recognised statelessness as something special and stateless people as having special needs. The UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (from 1954) entered into force for the Netherlands in 1962 and this instrument sets out the rights to be enjoyed by stateless people. But just last week, an important Dutch advisory body concluded that “there is no proper instrument to establish statelessness in the Netherlands, which means that often cases of statelessness are left undetermined”. According to the Netherlands Advisory Committee on Migration Affairs (Advisory Committee), this must change because statelessness is something special. Their report, “No country of one’s own” contains a number of concrete recommendations that warrant our attention.

There are different ways in which a person can end up stateless. My first encounter with statelessness was with the little Omar (pseudonym). Omar was a healthy baby with two loving parents. But he faced one considerable disadvantage, right from the start: he had no nationality. He could not acquire his mother’s nationality because she was from a country where women do not enjoy an independent right to pass nationality to their children (still a problem in more than 25 countries around the world today). Nor could he get his father’s Dutch (!) nationality, because his parents were not married. His father needed to recognize his paternal link with Omar before the birth in order to automatically confer his nationality – but he didn’t know that.

Omar is not alone. Of the 2005 people who are registered as stateless in the Dutch Municipal Basic Administration (GBA) a surprising 1400 were actually born here in the Netherlands. While the nationality of these individuals is often not a purely Dutch issue, we are still forced to conclude that the Netherlands is contributing to the creation of statelessness. The Netherlands has a safeguard in its nationality law according to which children like Omar can opt for Dutch nationality after three years. However, in practice, the Advisory Committee has pointed out a number of problems in the implementation of this policy. A particularly troublesome issue is the condition that Dutch law stipulates for the exercise of this right of option, namely that the child is lawfully resident – a requirement that is, quite simple, in violation of the Netherlands’ international obligations (1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness). Thanks to this requirement, many children are unable to exercise their right to a nationality. There are currently 85 stateless children registered in the GBA who were born here and are now four years old or more, but who cannot opt for Dutch nationality because they do not have a residence permit. The Netherlands is failing these children. This is why the Advisory Committee report urges to “drop the condition of lawful stay for the right of option for children born in the Netherlands”.

For many people, the first encounter with statelessness is through the story of Victor Navorski, the character played by Tom Hanks in “The Terminal”. As creatively demonstrated in this film, some stateless migrants find themselves stuck in limbo. In the film, limbo has a physical manifestation: Victor is trapped at the airport, he cannot leave through the exit doors because he has no permission to enter the country, but he also cannot board a plane to leave and go elsewhere because he does not have a valid passport. In the Netherlands, statelessness is also not a ground for a residence permit, but there is also no other country to which a stateless person can return. This can mean that a stateless person spends a long time trapped in immigration detention or is faced with the daily struggle of survival as an irregular migration in the Netherlands. This situation is not in anyone’s interest and requires a humane and practical solution. The Advisory Committee has therefore recommended that the Netherlands establish a procedure for determining whether a person is stateless and the grant of residence on that basis.

The Advisory Committee’s report demonstrates very clearly how the Netherlands can make just a few small policy adjustments to bring real change to a small group of people. It will also help to generate more understanding for stateless people. As a stateless woman once explained in an interview to UNHCR: “When I tell people that I am stateless, what I see in their faces is shock, ignorance and mistrust. Each time you have to explain. It’s as if you have to prove your right to exist!” It is vital to fight against this ignorance. Statelessness is something special, but a stateless person is also a person.

This blog is an English translation of a similar piece that was published on the public comments page of Dutch newspaper Trouw on Thursday 12 December 2013.

Dr Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme