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The Netherlands violated a child’s rights by failing to acknowledge that he was stateless and eligible for international protection, a UN committee has found, urging the country to change its legislation. In its first ever decision on the right of children to acquire nationality, the UN Human Rights Committee determined on Tuesday that by registering the child as “nationality unknown”, the Dutch authorities had violated his right to international protection and also to seek a nationality.   Continue in The Guardian:  https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/un-finds-netherlands-violated-human-rights-of-stateless-child

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...

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...

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. ...