From on-the-ground research to international lobbying

Every year, several countries are reviewed by committees – or ‘treaty bodies’– attached to the major UN human rights conventions to ensure that they are abiding by their international obligations, and to question them when they are not. This happens on a rotating basis for countries across all of the different UN committees. Before the committees address the countries, they ask review the report prepared by the relevant government about how the international norms are being implemented. They also collect and review submissions from NGOs and other organizations as to what they think are the most pressing human rights issues in the state and what is needed to address them. NGOs have an added opportunity of physically attending the pre-sessions, making a short oral statement on identified problems and answering any questions the committee would like further information on. This July, three countries in the Middle East and North Africa that still retain an element of gender discrimination in their nationality laws, came up for review before the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: Iraq, Qatar and Bahrain. Although Iraq’s law is now greatly improved, none of these states fully grant mothers the right transfer nationality to their children on an equal par to men – a situation which can lead to new cases of statelessness.

 

This issue tied in perfectly with our recent research with the Women’s Refugee Commission, “Our Motherland, Our Country”. Continuing our joint follow-up advocacy , we considered this to be an ideal opportunity to talk to the CEDAW committee about the consequences of gendered nationality laws, specifically the problems that emerged from the findings of this report.  So, yesterday I was in Geneva to give the Statelessness Programme’s first ever briefing of a UN treaty body. After a mix-up of the starting times and length of session, things finally got going and I was invited to deliver  a short presentation. This was followed by some questions from the committee, to help them fill any gaps in knowledge they had on the issue. The presentation we had prepared contained quotes from some of the testimonials compiled during the WRC research, contextualizing the issue as a real humanitarian problem, and highlighting how family unity is being destroyed because of this discrimination in nationality laws. 

 

NGOs from around the world can come and talk about any state law or practise they feel is in violation of the convention, and they all do this together in the same briefing session. This provides a fascinating opportunity to understand more about other topics which often directly correlate to our own interests. A very active women's rights NGO from Iraq, for example, joined the same pre-session I attended and had a lot to say about Iraq’s flaws in adhering to its CEDAW obligations - they spoke about topics varying from the rise in cases of FGM to the lack of female representation in parliament.  We also learnt from them of the phenomenon of men who are identified as 'terrorists' in Iraq, who are forced therefore to live without the protection of the law and unable to conduct any legal transactions. Some (informally) marry, have children and often eventually abandon their families without any legal trace - leaving a new generation of children with no form of identification and putting them at risk of becoming stateless.

 

My time at the CEDAW pre-session allowed me to witness some interesting presentations and a lively question and answer session. It was clear that the Committee was very eager to hear the voices of people working on the ground and it was also very satisfying to find that the application and the procedure itself of briefing such a committee is very simple and easy to navigate. I admit that I went in with some doubts about this form of advocating for change, which seemed a rather abstract mechanism of lobbying, far away from lives of those we had met during the field research. However, actually, experiencing the process and seeing the real interest and enthusiasm of the committee and the NGOs involved, I came away newly inspired and would now firmly vouch for the importance and necessity of continued international pressure and support – alongside national initiatives – for the promotion of universally gender neutral nationality laws. We are really looking forward to seeing how the information we provided will feed into the review and questioning of these three countries by the committee.

 

Zahra Albarazi, Researcher and MENA statelessness expert, Statelessness Programme

No Country, No Rights: Gender Discrimination and Statelessness (re-post)

An estimated 12 million people worldwide are stateless, with no country to call home. They are not recognized as nationals of the countries where they live, and as a result are denied basic human rights. For many people, this situation arises because of gender discrimination in nationality laws. This occurs when nationality legislation prevents women from acquiring, changing, retaining or passing on their nationality to their children and/or their spouses on an equal basis with men. This discrimination must end and nationality laws must be changed.

Today, the Women's Refugee Commission, and the Statelessness Program at the University of Tilburg (Netherlands) are launching a report, Our Motherland, Our Country: Gender Discrimination and Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa.

The report is based on field research we conducted in Morocco and Egypt, which have enacted nationality legislation to address statelessness, and in Kuwait and Jordan, which still maintain gender discrimination in their nationality laws. Twenty-nine countries around the world, 11 of them in the Middle East and North Africa, still have discriminatory nationality laws that make it impossible for women to transfer their nationality to their children, or to their non-national spouses.

Being stateless has grave consequences, often leading to violations of fundamental human rights. Stateless people face many barriers and obstacles: without citizenship or identity documents they are unable to own or rent property, secure formal employment or access services such as public health care, education and social welfare benefits. Statelessness impacts individuals' ability to marry and couples' decisions to start a family. As one stateless woman in Kuwait who has no identity documents told our researcher, "I cannot get married. The court will refuse to allow me to sign a marriage certificate because I do not exist." It also impacts inheritance and property rights, leaving those affected unable to transfer their financial and material resources to their children. Not surprisingly, the research found that statelessness impacted mental health, with widespread depression reported among individuals and families affected.

The recent enactment of reforms to nationality legislation in Morocco and Egypt has enabled women to transfer their nationality to their children, thereby conferring rights previously denied. The reformed law of 2007 in Morocco states, "A child born of a Moroccan father, or a child born of a Moroccan mother, is a Moroccan child." The reform has led to a resolution of previous problems with regards to residency and access to public health care. The greatest impact of reforms in Egypt in 2004 has been the ability of families to remain in the country without fear of deportation and access to education and employment. The reforms in these two countries demonstrate the positive change in individuals' and families' lives when gender discrimination is removed from nationality legislation.

The Women's Refugee Commission recommends that governments take immediate steps to amend their nationality laws to allow women the same rights as men to pass on their nationality to their children and non-national spouses, with retroactive effect. We are also advocating for governments to provide access to basic rights for those affected by gender discrimination in nationality laws, in particular, access to education, health care, employment, identity and travel documents.

Many of the governments with these discriminatory laws have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in addition to being bound by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's time they live up to these obligations and reform their nationality laws to grant women equal treatment and stop the cycle of rendering generation after generation of children stateless because of whom you marry.

This post originally appeared on the website of the Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-costa/no-country-no-rights-gend_b_3398826.html

Statelessness consultations in Geneva

This week, I attended the annual UNHCR-NGO consultations for the first time. This is a 3-day event during which civil society partners of the UN Refugee Agency descend on Geneva and engage in a structured dialogue (or sometimes monologue) with one another and with UNHCR staff. Before coming, I wasn't quite sure what to expect - I found it hard to picture what a 'consultation' with some 300 participating NGOs might look like or what the outcome would be. As I sit at the airport now, waiting for my flight home, I am still digesting the experience. Overall, I would say that it was exhausting but productive, with the most beneficial aspect being the chance to catch up in person - during a very short space of time - with many of our existing partners and discuss ongoing and possible future projects, as well as to make new connections that will hopefully lead to all sorts of new opportunities. Without attempting to give a comprehensive account of what went on this week, below is a reflection on some of the highlights...
 
Launching our research with the Women's Refugee Commission
My colleague Zahra Albarazi headed for Geneva a few days before me in order to participate in a so-called 'side event' during the lunch break of the Human Rights Council sitting last Friday. She was the principal researcher for our study that mapped the impact of gender discrimination in nationality law in terms of how it contributes to statelessness and what knock-on effects this has. The research focused on the Middle East and North Africa region, where Zahra undertook several field trips during the first months of this year, namely to Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco. The Human Rights Council side event in which the findings of this research were presented also marked the official launch of the report and the beginning of advocacy work by the Women's Refugee Commission (who took the initiative for and funded the project). The report, an evocative photo-essay and two absolutely fantastic short advocacy videos which show the human dimension of this problem can be found on WRC's website. The launch successfully out of the way last week, I was able to join Zahra and our WRC counterparts and participate in a number of smaller and more detailed briefings on the project in the margins of the NGO consultations. The response, especially to the stories told in the videos by those directly effected, was very impressive and we have real hope that this project can help to contribute to a better understanding of the need to continue to push for the reform of nationality laws to allow women to pass nationality to their children. We certainly don't want any more women to feel guilty or depressed because they married a foreigner or for couples to feel pressure to divorce in a desperate attempt to give their children a chance of acquiring a nationality and securing a better future.
 
Statelessness retreat

 

Immediately before the official (and rather imposing) UNHCR-NGO consultations kicked off, UNHCR convened a smaller group (+/- 30) of organisations and individuals specifically active in the field of statelessness for a 'retreat', to discuss how to improve collaboration and make more of an impact. A retreat in nature, not just in name, we convened at a picturesque but Spartan monastery outside Lausanne. In addition to exchanging good (and less good) experiences and providing updates on planned activities so that we could all think about ensuring greater complementarity of our work, we also had an active discussion about the need to a global network, coalition or movement of some kind to really take on statelessness. There seemed to be consensus that now is the time to act and that with the momentum that exists behind statelessness, we perhaps need to set the bar higher and formulate a ‘big’ ambition to work towards. What exactly this bigger goal or campaign around which we should all be uniting, was still up for discussion at the end of the retreat, but agreeing that it may be time to identify such a goal is certainly an important first step.
 
UNHCR-NGO consultations
During the NGO consultations proper, statelessness was put on the agenda for one of the thematic break-out sessions and an entire afternoon was dedicated to further discussion. This session was attended by somewhere in the region of 75 individuals (from my own quick and rather crude head-count), bringing in more voices than those which were involved in the retreat. Here again, there was a discussion of good practices and common outstanding challenges, in particular on: how to move governments to make (then keep) commitments in the field of statelessness, how to tackle protracted situations of statelessness like that of the Rohingya in Myanmar and how to take advantage of the 60^th anniversary of the 1954 Statelessness Convention next year to make strides on the issue. I had the honour (and daunting task) of moderating the session, which turned out to be rather enjoyable since I was able to abuse my position at regular intervals to add my own thoughts on ideas or questions raised. Personally, I found the last part of the discussion which was all about ‘what now?’ the most interesting and useful. It was quickly apparent that, within the room at least, a consensus has been reached about the challenges posed by statelessness but also the opportunity to really make a difference on this issue if existing momentum can be consolidated. The discussion, as at the retreat, therefore quickly turned to a crucial question that needs to be addressed: coalition or cause? It’s something of a chicken-and-egg discussion, the crux of which is this: do we need to focus our energies on further growing and organizing a coalition of organisations to work on statelessness and push this issue forwards or do we need to – with those already engaged – identify a common cause around which we can rally and subsequently hope to draw in and activate others? My own sense at the moment is that the latter approach might be more effective, since I think it will be easier to entice organisations that have to date been hesitant to get involved in the issue to become a part of a global movement if the foundation for such a movement has already been laid with a few organisations taking a lead role and publically announcing their ambition. What that ambition could be also seems to be crystallising as several organisations expressed their support for the goal that has, in fact, already been enunciated by UNHCR High Commissioner Guterres: the eradication of statelessness within the next decade. Realists would likely be quick to suggest that this is an ambition which is inevitably beyond our reach, yet there is something inspiring about the sentiment and to dare to set ourselves such a goal (and publically commit to it) would, I think, enable us to collectively channel our energies and set out a roadmap that – even if only partly achieved – could bring real and lasting change for the issue. If we could, for instance, even achieve the eradication of childhood statelessness in the next ten years and ensure that no more children start out life without a nationality, this would be a major and massively worthwhile achievement. In short, I for one came away with a new perspective on our work and the task that lays ahead of us and I am quietly hopeful that over the course of the next year or so, we will begin to be more daring and more ambitious in our aims.
 
Other bits and bobs
Besides promoting the findings of our research project with WRC and actively participating in all of the general statelessness discussions, I was also able to make some strides on other matters during my stay in Geneva. Together with some of the other steering committee members of the European Network on Statelessness – who were also in town for the NGO consultations – we were able to hold some useful side meetings to discuss a strategy for tackling statelessness in Europe. One of the most fruitful of these was a gathering of NGOs in which UNHCR’s Europe Bureau Director also participated and gave voice to the plans that they are laying for the issue in this region. It was encouraging to hear of the commitment not just to participating actively in activities around the commemoration of the 1954 convention next year, but longer term, to really find solutions to bring back the number of stateless people in the region. The openness of the discussion between UNHCR and NGOs in this region and the added value of ENS as a regional network representing NGO experiences and interests, offers massive advantages in helping to translate all of the ideas into actual action. Another good experience this week was the chance to speak up for involvement of the academic community in work on statelessness and to appeal to both UNHCR and NGOs to reach out to university partners and draw them into their activities wherever relevant. I was very pleased to discover that I was not the only academic present and even more pleased to make a number of very interesting new contacts that will, I hope, lead to some form of collaboration with universities, including in Japan, South Africa and the US. So, plenty to follow up on in the weeks and months to come and fingers crossed that by the time of next year’s NGO consultations we will have formed and consolidated further partnerships – and perhaps even achieved the beginnings of a global movement – on statelessness.
 
Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme
 

Punished for not having a Jordanian father

I have been working on the issue of statelessness for several years now.  During this time, I have focused mainly on legal research and awareness raising work, and I have been continually fascinated by the legal intricacy statelessness unfolds.  Despite this interest, and despite having done previous field research on the issue, I do not think I truly comprehended the extent of the problem of statelessness until now.  Through my involvement in a project co-ordinated by the Women’s Refugee Commission, conducting advocacy-oriented research in four countries that maintain or have recently removed gender discrimination from their laws, I have had the opportunity to spend time with affected families.

I am now coming to the end of my stay in the first country of research: Jordan.  Here, women are not entitled to transmit their nationality to their children so, in a variety of circumstances, children of Jordanian mothers end up stateless. My time here has emphasised how, as well as being a legal, political and theoretical conundrum, statelessness really is a major humanitarian problem.  Having compiled nearly 50 testimonials and facilitated several focus group discussions, I have discovered something unique in each story and the problems it highlighted.  Women’s inability to confer nationality has affected each family differently, but it has also affected each family severely.  

I have sat in houses listening to women explaining how their children have, over the years, become increasingly ill as access to free healthcare was barred due to their lack of nationality.   Added to this, as they are not Jordanian citizens, these children rarely have access to assistance provided by charities.  I have been amongst young disillusioned men who are repeatedly arrested and temporarily detained as they carry no ID documents –being children of female Jordanian nationals gives them no right to identity papers.   I have been in houses where the men sit all day at home, with no hope of finding legal employment, and seen foreign husbands who have to choose between remaining unemployed or working and risking deportation because they can’t afford expensive work permits.

Many of the families I met lived in very poor areas.  Statelessness in these areas has one thing in common - it protracts, prolongs, and exacerbates this poverty.  However it was not a problem exclusive to the poor.  There was also the college student I met who was not able to travel because of her situation, and whose mother worried as she could never inherit from her family, since registering anything under her name is impossible.

Whilst in Jordan I also heard of a high-profile case of a Jordanian women who was attempting to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge.  Her husband and children are trying to cross the border from Syria to Jordan to escape the violence.  They, however, were refused entry.  Putting aside regional politics, the fact that the man was married to a Jordanian, or that the children had a Jordanian mother, meant nothing.   Not only can the children not obtain Jordanian nationality, they do not have the right to even enter their mother’s country under extreme humanitarian circumstances.  

Not having the right to confer nationality to your children is often framed as a women’s rights issue. In the Levant region there has been much positive action and a variety of initiatives have sprung up to try and repeal this gender discrimination. And yes, it is clearly a gender issue, but this should not overshadow the fact that it is also so much more.  It becomes a child’s rights issue when you ask a nine year old boy what he wants to be when he is older, and he replies that he can’t continue school for long, so nothing.  Or when a two month old newborn is ill and coughing in the cold but has no access to free healthcare anywhere, as she is not a citizen of anywhere.  Furthermore, it is often the men that suffer the most from this discrimination in the region.  In addition to not being able to work and provide for their families, most families said they would only allow their daughters to marry citizens, so that they would be able to become Jordanian and the next generation’s access to nationality is also assured. For the stateless sons, the future is bleak – men have no hope of acquiring nationality through marriage and their children are doomed to inherit their condition.

Sitting in these houses and being amongst these families, gaining a very brief glimpse of the day to day, year to year, generation to generation struggles they experience highlighted how this really is a serious problem everywhere, with still so much more to be done.  One sentiment however that I heard from the majority of these families was their continued optimism that there can, must and will be a reform of the nationality law.  A sentiment that I have taken away too.

Zahra Albarazi, MENA nationality and statelessness expert, Statelessness Programme

ABOUT THIS PROJECT:
This is the first phase of the project The Statelessness Programme is conducting as commissioned by the Women’s Refugees Commission. The next stage of the study will be conducted in Morocco.  Discrimination in the nationality law was removed there in 2007 and the research hopes to discover how this amendment is being implemented and how it has impacted on the lives of the families who had been affected by this discrimination. The full findings of this project, alongside the video component will be available later in 2013.

Photo taken during a focus group discussion - most of the meetings were in people's homes, but this group met in relatively posh surroundings