Citizens of nowhere

 

 

I don’t care who you are,

Where you’re from, what you did,

As long as you love me

– Backstreet Boys

These lines from a popular Backstreet Boys album aptly summarises the dilemma of millions of stateless people of the world. Among the billions who inhabit this world, citizen of some country or the other, there exist a few million, who are "nowhere men". No country or government calls them their own; these stateless people are even overlooked by census counters. In January 2007, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported 21,018,589 individuals falling under its mandate. There are around two millions stateless people in Thailand (perhaps the largest). Members of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority from western Myanmar, form a major part of stateless people.

Rohingyas are not given any citizenship and are even denied civil rights. There are 750,000 Rohingyas, accounting for nearly one-third of the population. In order to escape persecution, around 100,000 Rohingyas fled Myanmar and settled in Bangladesh, where they live in camps or on the streets. Since, Rohingyas are refused even refugee status by Bangladesh, they are unable to seek protection from the UNHCR.

Most stateless people face severe abuse, exploitation, forced labour and religious persecution. In Malaysia, thousands of Filipino and Indonesian children are denied birth certificates and often separated from their families. In few parts of Africa and South Asia, politicians are using the process of granting or removal of citizenship as a political weapon. Without any kind of citizenship they often are denied the rights to schooling, health care, property ownership and travel. Moreover, most NGOs concentrate on the abuses they suffer rather than trying to provide them with some kind of identity. As per UN records, there are over 7,979,251 stateless people in Asia; 4,740,392 in Europe; 5,069,123 in Africa; and 3,229,822 in the US.

Stateless people literally have no place they can call their own. It is time the international community woke up to their travails to address this pressing issue.