|
|
|
World must wake up to the plight of stateless people
By Rajan Zed president of Universal Society of Hinduism
|
15 million stateless people worldwide suffer rejection day after day. The issue of statelessness should be urgently addressed and stateless populations around the world need to be protected from severe and continuous violation of their human rights.
Access of stateless people to health services, employment, education, property ownership and travel is severely restricted and they face detention and inability to obtain identity papers. They are denied the most basic of rights and are vulnerable to trafficking.
Universal birth registration procedures should be launched. Many countries are still not part of the stateless treaties, exclusionary policies, gender-discriminatory legislations, etc., which are at the root of many statelessness situations and should end.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), national governments, aid and civil society organizations, etc., need to put more efforts to highlight and improve the plight of this most invisible population of the world. Something needs to be emergently done for stateless Roma in Europe, Myanmar Rohingyas, Kenya Nubians, ethnic Russians in Latvia and Estonia, Syrian Kurds, Kuwait Bedoun, children in Sabah (Malaysia), Dominicans of Haitian descent, Ivory Coast immigrants, unconfirmed nationals in Nepal, and ethnic hill tribes of Thailand.
Leaders of various religions/denominations, including His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, should also come forward and advocate on behalf of stateless as religions told us to help the helpless.
UNHCR says “statelessness refers to the condition of an individual who is not considered as a national by any state”. Countries with most stateless populations include Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Syria, Iraq, Estonia and Kenya.
Launched in 1950 and headquartered in Geneva (Switzerland), UNHCR "has a mandate to help stateless people". António Guterres and T. Alexander Aleinikoff are its High Commissioner and Deputy High Commissioner respectively and Hollywood movie star Angelina Jolie is one of its Goodwill Ambassadors.
August 24, 2011
|
| Comment on this article! | | There are presently 1 comment.
Post a comment | | | | |
| Response | | By Dzintars on August 25,2011
|
What you fail to mention about the stateless Russians in Latvia and Estonia is that the only reason they are in those countries is because Stalin murdered and deported tens of thousands of people to provide housing for these Russians that he inserted into those countries for the sole purpose of exerting the Kremlin's influence on them.
They are deprived of the right to vote, because they were only inserted there to undermine the sovereignty of the countries to begin with. When Russia returns my family to me and compensates me for our lost property, I will cease to discriminate against these attempted usurpers. This, of course, will not happen, because my family died in miserable mud huts in Siberia. The Russians are free to leave if my house is not comfortable enough for them. | | | | | Post a comment | | To post a comment, we encourage you to become a member of Tolerance.ca® or log in if you are already a member. You can still post your commentwithout registering, but you will need to fill your personal information each time.
Become a member (free) | Log in | |
|
© 2013 Tolerance.ca ® Inc. All reproduction rights reserved. All information reproduced on the Web pages of www.tolerance.ca (including articles, images, photographs, and logos) is protected by intellectual property rights owned by Tolerance.ca ® Inc. or, in certain cases, by its author. Any reproduction of the information for use other than personal use is prohibited. In particular, any alteration, widespread distribution, translation, sale, commercial exploitation or reutilization of the contents of the Web site, without the prior written permission of Tolerance.ca ® Inc., is strictly forbidden. For information, please contact info@tolerance.caTolerance.ca ® Inc. is not responsible for external links nor for the contents of the advertisements appearing on Tolerance.ca ®. Ads companies may use information about your visits to this web site in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.
|
|