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A decision taken over 25 years ago has left many in Latvia feeling rootless. When the country regained independence in 1991, the Russians who had arrived under Soviet rule were denied citizenship. This decision left  700,000 former citizens of the Soviet Union alienated by the country taking shape around them. That number is now thought to be  260,000 . Evgeny Drobat came to Soviet Latvia from St. Petersburg – then Leningrad – in 1947, when he was just a child. As a member of Latvia’s Communist Party in the years leading up to independence, he voted against the parliamentary law that would end up denying him and thousands of other ethnic Russia’s citizenship in an independent Latvia. “Latvia is not a true democracy,” he told Vice News from Daugavpils, Latvia’s second city. “The country’s politics are not based on democratic rights, they are based on ethnic rights.” More:  https://news.vice.com/story/latvias-non-citizen-policy-leaves-thousan...

Did you know that famous Polar explorer Nansen became a hero for refugees and invented a passport for stateless people? Later the Nansen passport evolved into nowadays refugee passport. I knew of him because my dad had a book about Polar expeditions but did not know he was the first High Commisioner for Refugees. Between 1922 and 1938, the "Nansen Passport" allowed stateless people to make a new life. By Cara Giaimo February 07, 2017 On January 27, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order that, among other provisions, barred all refugees from entering the United States for 120 days (and banned Syrian refugees indefinitely). As the ban, currently stayed by order of a federal judge, makes its way up through the U.S. court system, refugees all over the world watch closely , their futures hanging in the balance. The current refugee crisis is the largest the world has ever seen —but it's far from unprecedented. Back in the 1920s, c...

New article by Barzoo Eliassi, Senior lecturer, Linnaeus University, Department of Social Work, Sweden ABSTRACT Mass displacement in the Middle East is a major political challenge for contemporary Middle Eastern and Western states. As a consequence, statelessness has emerged as one of the central political issues in relation to the collapse and weakening of the states in the Middle East. Through deploying a qualitative inquiry and interviews with 50 Kurdish immigrants, this article investigates how members of Kurdish diasporas in Sweden and the UK conceive and experience statelessness in a world of unequal nation-states and hierarchical citizenship. Since diasporas are important non-state actors in nation-building processes, it is important to analyse their diasporic visions and the ways they challenge or reinforce the power of the nation-state in the context of migration. While from a legal or a right-based approach, the solution to statelessness is found in a...

Refugee crisis creates 'stateless generation' of children in limbo Babies born to migrants may be ineligible for citizenship in any country because of biased laws and inadequate EU controls Europe’s refugee crisis is threatening to compound a hidden problem of statelessness, with experts warning that growing numbers of children are part of an emerging “stateless generation”. Gender-biased nationality laws in Syria combined with ineffective legal safeguards in the EU states mean that many children born to Syrian refugees in Europe are at high risk of becoming stateless – a wretched condition of marginalisation that affects 10 million people worldwide. Under Syrian law, only men can pass citizenship on to their children. The UN estimates that 25% of Syrian refugee households are fatherless. More in The Guardian: . http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/27/refugee-crisis-creating-stateless-generation-children-experts-warn?CMP=twt_b-gdnnews Interes...

Dit jaar bestaat het Verdrag betreffende de status van staatlozen 1 zestig jaar. Het Verdrag heeft jarenlang weinig aandacht gekregen. Dit in tegenstelling tot het Verdrag inzake de status van vluchtelingen uit die zelfde tijd dat, net als het Staatlozenverdrag, een kwetsbare groep mensen toegang tot een aantal fundamentele mensenrechten biedt. Een groep mensen die in beide gevallen geen beroep kan doen op bescherming door een eigen staat. Staatloosheid Waar het debat over het waarborgen van de rechten van staatlozen lange tijd ontbrak, heeft het Vluchtelingenverdrag zowel op Europees als op nationaal niveau concrete invulling gekregen, onder andere in de vorm van een met waarborgen omgeven procedure ter vaststelling van het vluchtelingschap. Ten aanzien van het vaststellen van staatloosheid kent Nederland geen aparte procedure. Wereldwijd zijn er ca. 12 miljoen staatlozen. In Europa zijn dat er naar schatting 600.000. In Nederland staan er tweeduizend personen...

News Stories , 27 November 2014 © UNHCR/H.Caux A man ambles down a track in the lush forest of Côte d'Ivoire, where statelessness among the children of people originating from Burkina Faso is a problem. DUÉKOUÉ, Côte d'Ivoire, UNHCR – When asked about his past, Ousmane* hesitates, clearly reluctant to talk about it. He has suffered a great deal in his life, and it pains him to recount bad memories. Once he realises that his UNHCR visitors are friends, he begins to open up and tell his harrowing tale of life without a nationality. His recollections of childhood are hazy – he knows only that he was born in a small village in south-east Côte d'Ivoire, across the border from Ghana, that his mother was a citizen of Burkina Faso, or Burkinabé, and that his father disappeared when he was young. But when asked what nationality he has, Ousmane cannot answer. Like many other children born in rural areas of Côte d'Ivoire, the 33-year-old was not reg...

Attenderingsservice Adviescommissie voor Vreemdelingenzaken (ACVZ)   Bij brief van 12 november 2014 heeft de SvVenJ gereageerd op één van de aanbevelingen uit het ACVZ-advies ‘Geen land te bekennen’ over de verdragsrechtelijke bescherming van staatlozen in Nederland. De ACVZ heeft geadviseerd om voor het optierecht voor staatloos in Nederland geboren kinderen alleen als voorwaarde te stellen dat er sprake moet zijn van «habitual residence» van drie jaar, in plaats van wettig en feitelijk verblijf. De ACVZ leidt dit af uit artikel 1 van het Verdrag tot beperking der staatloosheid van 1961. In de Guidelines van de UNHCR staat dat onder habitual residence wordt verstaan stabiel, feitelijk verblijf.   De SvVenJ is voornemens deze aanbeveling als volgt in te vullen:   In de rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap (RWN) zal een aparte optiegrond worden opgenomen naast de bestaande optiegrond onder artikel 6, eerste lid, onderdeel b, waarin aan staatloze...

The Statelessness Program and UNHCR invite academics that do research on any topic related to statelessness to submit proposals for presentations at the first ever global forum on statelessness. The forum takes place in The Hague from 15 to 17 September 2014. Under the title ‘New Directions in Statelessness Research and Policy’, three themes have been identified as the main focus for presentations and discussion: 1. Stateless Children 2. Statelessness and Security 3. Responses to Statelessness The organization welcomes submissions from all academic disciplines. Deadline for submissions is 1 December 2013. For more information: http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/statelessness/news/forum/call-for-presenters/ In verband met geldwolven die denken geld te kunnen claimen op krantenartikelen die op een blog als deze worden geplaatst maar na meestal een dag ...

Deelname aan een terroristische organisatie gaat automatisch leiden tot verlies van het Nederlanderschap. Staatssecretaris Fred Teeven (Veiligheid en Justitie) wil dat regelen met een nieuw wetsvoorstel. Hij voert daarmee een Tweede Kamermotie uit die was ingediend door de VVD.   Tot nu toe kan het Nederlanderschap alleen worden afgenomen als iemand vrijwillig dienst neemt in het leger van een staat die betrokken is bij gevechtshandelingen tegen het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden of tegen een bondgenootschap waarvan het Koninkrijk lid is, zoals bijvoorbeeld de NAVO. Lees verder in de Telegraaf hier:  http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/21852930/__Terrorist_raakt_paspoort_kwijt__.html?goback=.gde_1624427_member_270083995.gde_1624427_member_269867262#! In ...

The PDES Facebook page posted a note today indicating that there are 50+ professional jobs currently being advertised by UNHCR. A few that deal specifically with statelessness issues caught my eye: Senior Legal Coordinator (Statelessness), Geneva "This is the most senior legal post relating specifically to statelessness within UNHCR, addressing issues for non-refugee stateless populations under a separate and independent mandate. As such, the post is responsible for the overall policy direction of UNHCR, for development and implementation of doctrine relating to statelessness, and is the principal officer making representations to external actors on the issue, including to senior government officials and the media. In exercising these responsibilities, the post oversees development of strategies to address statelessness as well as provision of technical advice and support (on civil status, nationality laws, legal status, solutions, etc.) to all protection staf...

Stateless And Stranded On American Samoa by NPR Staff Audio for this story from All Things Considered will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET   Enlarge Courtesy Mikhail Sebastian   Mikhail Sebastian lived in Los Angeles before his fateful trip to American Samoa. ...

© UNHCR/ GEMUNU AMARASINGHE   To be stateless is to be without nationality or citizenship. There is no legal bond of nationality between the state and the individual. Stateless people face numerous difficulties in their daily lives: they can lack access to health care, education, property rights and the ability to move freely. They are also vulnerable to arbitrary treatment and crimes like trafficking. Their marginalization can create tensions in society and lead to instability at an international level, including, in extreme cases, conflict and displacement. Some persons formally possess a nationality but are in a similar situation as stateless persons. For these, the term de facto statelessness has often been used. There is, however, no universally accepted definition of this term. Traditionally the term was used to describe a person who, outside his/her country of nationality, is denied diplomatic and consular protection or assistance of his/her country....

7 June 2012 | Chris Nash, International Protection Policy Coordinator at Asylum Aid A year which ended with UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, hailing a “quantum leap” in global efforts to tackle statelessness was also an opportune moment for civil society actors to examine how best to coordinate and strengthen their contribution in support of such efforts. In July 2011, and with that aim already in mind, a small group of organisations - Asylum Aid, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the Open Society Justice Initiative, the Equal Rights Trust, Praxis and the Tilburg Statelessness Programme - started a conversation which resulted in the creation of the European Network on Statelessness (ENS). A Steering Committee was formed to guide the development of the Network and to put in place solid foundations for its future expansion and sustainability. The Steering Committee met again in December 2011 and it was deci...

Igor Skrijevski (r.) en Galina Skrijevskaia hebben drie woningen in de Verenigde Staten, maar leven noodgedwongen in een kleine kamer van een asielzoekerscentrum in Apeldoorn. Ze verblijven in een asielzoekerscentrum, maar zijn niet uit op een verblijfsvergunning. Integendeel, Igor en Galina willen „naar huis.” Naar de Verenigde Staten, waar ze woningen hebben in New York, Ohio en Pennsylvania. Zestien jaar leefden en werkten ze daar, totdat ze in 2007 als staatloze burgers het land werden uitgezet. Twee bedden, een kast, een tafel en twee stoelen. Die vullen de kleine kamer van Igor Skrijevski (48) en Galina Skrijevskaia (46) in het asielzoekerscentrum (azc) aan het Wilhelminapark in Apeldoorn. Op tafel ligt een vuistdikke stapel papier, onderdeel van het dossier van de ‘asielzoekers’ dat moet aantonen dat hun verhaal geen fictie maar werkelijkheid is. Drie uur lang voert Igor vrijwel onafgebroken het woord. Zijn vrouw, zittend op bed, luistert mee en geeft soms een aanvulling. O...