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| Report cover with photo by Greg Constantine. |
By Elizabeth Gibson*
On the
first day of school, children often worry whether they'll make new friends or
like their teachers. But in the Dominican Republic, some confront a far graver
concern: Will I be turned away because I don't have a birth certificate?
A report published today by the Human Rights Institute at
Georgetown University Law Center shows that many children born in the Dominican
Republic but descended from foreigners, particularly Haitians, are denied an
education. For generations, such children were recognized as citizens, but
within the last decade, the Dominican government has refused to issue many of
them birth certificates, identity cards and other essential documentation,
rendering them stateless. The report, Left Behind: How Statelessness in the
Dominican Republic Limits Children's Access to Education,
concludes that the Dominican Republic is failing to comply with its domestic
and international human rights obligations, including the human right to
education.
"We wanted to look at the human impact that statelessness
has on children through the lens of education as an important enabling
right," said Georgetown Law student Jamie Armstrong, LLM'14, one of the
report's editors. "Education is critical to the development of a child and
it is a gateway to full civil, political, economic, social, and cultural
participation in society. What we found, however, is that this path is often
barred with devastating consequences for children who are stateless or at risk
of statelessness."
