By Courtney Cox

Last year, a Dominican court held that illegal migrant workers’ children born in the Dominican Republic were denied automatic citizenship. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that the court’s holding was discriminatory towards Dominicans of Haitian descent and gave the country six months to invalidate the court’s ruling. This did not sit well with the Dominican government which found the finding to be unfair and unacceptable.

Nevertheless, the Associated Press reported that the Dominican Republic justified the withdrawal from the Inter-American Court’s jurisdiction on constitutional grounds: “the country had to withdraw from the rights court because the Senate never issued a resolution to ratify the February 1999 agreement with the rights court as required by the Dominican constitution.” Previously, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against the Dominican Republic on related issues including “indiscriminate deportations” of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian ancestry.

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December 02, 2014

By Ena Cefo

The United Nations voiced its concern over the Dominican Republic’s withdrawal from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR). The withdrawal from the court’s jurisdiction follows the IACHR’s order that the Dominican Republic should revoke its September 2013 domestic court judgment that children of undocumented Haitian migrants cannot obtain Dominican nationality. The Court expressed concern that this judgment denationalized hundreds of thousands of people who have been considered Dominican throughout their lives and found the judgment to be discriminatory against Afro-descendants within the country, i.e., Dominicans of Haitian descent. The Dominican Republic withdrew from the IACHR’s jurisdiction, claiming that the country’s recognition of the jurisdiction was “unconstitutional,” but the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) voiced its hopes that the country would reconfirm the jurisdiction of the IACHR.

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December 02, 2014