The People Who Have No Country
By: Maureen Lynch*
February 18, 2005
International Herald Tribune
There are millions of people in the world who are citizens of nowhere. They cannot vote, they cannot get jobs in most professions, they cannot own property or obtain a passport. These “stateless” people face discrimination, sexual and physical violence and socioeconomic hardship. Often they are denied access to health care and education.
The vulnerability of statelessness is captured in the words of a Bidoon living in the United Arab Emirates who asks: “What have we done to be treated like animals? We can’t get a job and can’t move around. We are between the earth and the sky, like a boat without a port.”
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that “everyone has the right to a nationality.” But statelessness remains a reality in all regions of the world. The exact numbers are not known, but a conservative estimate is 11 million stateless persons around the world. They include groups whose situation is relatively well recognized, like Europe’s Roma, the Palestinians and the Kurds, and groups whose plight is virtually unknown, like people from the former Soviet bloc, some of Thailand’s ethnic groups, the Bhutanese in Nepal, Muslim minorities in Burma and Sri Lanka, and ethnic minorities of the Great Lakes region of Africa like the Batwa “Pygmy” and the Banyamulenge.
The myriad causes of statelessness may include political upheaval, targeted discrimination (often for reasons of race or ethnicity), differences in laws between countries, laws relating to marriage and birth registration, expulsion of a people from a territory, nationality based only on descent (usually that of the father), abandonment and lack of means to register children.
One stateless population that the world has neglected are 250,000 to 300,000 Biharis (also called stranded Pakistanis), who were stripped of their citizenship after Bangladesh became a nation because they sided with West Pakistan during the struggle for independence. For the past two decades these people have lived in 66 squalid camps throughout Bangladesh. Recently the Bangladeshi government cut food rations to camps, forcing Bihari families to go without food for two or three days in a row.
States have the right to determine the procedures and conditions for acquisition and termination of citizenship, but statelessness and disputed nationality can only be addressed by the very governments that regularly breach the norms of protection and citizenship. To date, only 57 states are party to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, and even fewer, just 29 states, are party to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. The United States has not signed either one. And despite its mandate, only two staff members in the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees focus on helping the world’s stateless people.
The gap between rights and reality can be closed. Governments must respect the right of all individuals to have a nationality. Countries should sign and adhere to international standards to protect stateless people and reduce statelessness by facilitating naturalization processes. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees can be strengthened as the lead agency in accordance with its mandate on statelessness. The United States, whose aid budget often helps countries who have stateless people within their borders, should certainly require and evaluate the protection of stateless people.
Prevention and reduction of statelessness will contribute to the promotion of human rights, to an improved quality of life for those affected and to increased security around the globe. It will go a long way toward bringing millions of people closer to freedom, which truly gives the world its best hope for peace.
About the Author: Maureen Lynch is the director of research for Refugees International, based in Washington. Her report, ‘‘Lives On Hold,’’ can be found online at www.refugeesinternational.org.
Gender, Citizenship and Nationalism in Kuwait
By: Mary Ann Tetreault & Haya al-Mughni
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Citizenship and Nationality in Kuwait
Citizenship is a contested concept where state-formation is incomplete, a condition
that is regarded as widespread among the countries of the Middle East (cf. Bromley,
1994). In Kuwait, for example, the social contract myth is patriarchal in both senses
of the term, producing a conflict between Kuwait as a nation-state and as a dynastic
realm (al-Mughni, 1993). The Kuwaiti nation is envisioned as a family, a multi-level
hierarchy with the ruler at its head, rather than as a band of brothers of equal status.
The ruling family enjoys a constitutionally protected status and many informal
privileges greater than those of other nationals whose rights as citizens are thereby
limited (Crystal, 1990; TCtreault, 199 1, 1995a).
In Kuwait, the family rather than the person is constitutionally defined as the
basic unit of society. Like the state, the family is patriarchal. The subjection of
Kuwaiti women, though limited by law and constitution, is analogous to the
subjection of Kuwaiti citizens, which is also limited by law and constitution.
Women’s subjection is connected to their role in sexual reproduction, one that is
construed as problematic in a universe where the concept of penetration is analogous
to images of threat. The control of women’s bodies-who can penetrate them and
the status of their issue-is an issue that transcends ‘morality’ or even ’social
control’. Rather, it is a matter of national security.
The national security dimension of gendered nationality is highly threatening in
Kuwait. Although outsiders think of Kuwait as rich, Kuwaitis perceive their nation
The concept ‘nation-state’ is contested in the literature on nationalism and ethnicity.
The view of Anderson and Greenfeld is that nationalism inheres in the state as
political entity. Others, most prominently Walker Connor, believe that nationalism
is an ideology that is not simply analogous to kinship but is based on a belief that
actual kinship exists. Connor calls this ‘ethnonationalism’ and points out that few
nation-states actually feature the coincidence of a territory with a population sharing
the same ethnonational heritage (1994: 90-100). Thus, he distinguishes between
‘nationalism’ and ‘ethnonationalism’.
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