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."

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April 11, 2014

The Human Rights Institute Fact-Finding Project at Georgetown University Law Center will present a new report on Friday about the immediate and devastating impact that statelessness has on the lives of children in the Dominican Republic, including recommendations to the United States and Dominican governments for how to improve the situation. 

These findings come in the wake of recent developments in Dominican law that could render many Dominicans of Haitian descent stateless.

The event is 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Friday, April 11, in Hotung Building, Room 2000, at the Georgetown University Law Center. 

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April 07, 2014

Panelists left to right: Manuel Dandre (MOSCHTA), Charles Abbott (CEJIL), Ana María Belique (Centro Bono), Wade McMullen (RFK Center), and Francisco Quintana (CEJIL). Photo by Elizabeth Gibson.

If you missed this panel, please check out the webcast.  The Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute Fact-Finding Project also will be hosting a related event at 9 a.m. on Friday, April 11, in Hotung Room 2000 for the launch of a report on the immediate and devastating impact that statelessness has on the lives of children in the Dominican Republic.

By Shaw Drake*

Six months after the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic controversially redefined the scope of Dominican citizenship, thousands of futures remain in limbo as human rights groups take to the Inter-American Commission to demand respect for their rights.

“This decision is abhorrent and humiliating to human rights in the Dominican Republic,” said Manuel Dandre, a lawyer from the Socio-Cultural Movement for Haitian Workers (MOSCHTA).

Following their statements before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Monday, a group of international and Dominican organizations expressed their concerns during a panel at the Georgetown University Law Center today. Dominicanos por Derecho, the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights, and the Center for Justice and International Law(CEJIL), joined by coalition partners MOSCHTA and Centro Bono, presented arguments against the decision of the Constitutional Court and criticized the State’s lack of action in the six months following.

In September of 2013, the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic issued TC Ruling 168/13, which redefined the scope of Dominican citizenship to exclude those born in the Dominican Republic but descended from parents or grandparents who arrived in the country after 1929 and maintained an “irregular” immigration status. Many in the international community believe that the decision leads to arbitrary and discriminatory deprivation of nationality and has left thousands stateless.

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March 26, 2014

By Elizabeth Gibson

Statelessness is normally the purview of systematic discrimination, mass displacement, or state death – Rohingya living in a state of eternal limbo in refugee camps, families of Haitian descent trapped as an underclass in the Dominican Republic, or former residents of the Soviet Union who were abroad when their country literally ceased to exist.

Now, the United Kingdom is toying with making statelessness a punishment, and the international human rights community is less than amused (to use some British understatement).

A stateless person has no recognized citizenship in any country. Real statelessness is not just having your passport revoked (like Edward Snowden), it is legal non-existence, a lack of the “right to have rights.” During the House of Lords debate on a proposed immigration bill amendment today, Baroness Helena Kennedy explained:

“Deprivation [of citizenship], with all its consequences in the modern world, is equivalent to a penal sanction of the most serious kind, but imposed without a criminal trial, without a conviction, without close and open examination of the evidence, and without an effective opportunity of defence, contrary to the requirements of due process.”

Now, in fairness, statelessness exists in every country to varying extents – there are an estimated 12 million stateless people in the world. There also are other cases of states stripping someone's nationality based on national security or moral character. However, most of the world is seeking to reduce statelessness, and countries like the United Kingdom generally receive stateless people from other parts of the world but rarely create statelessness. For example, the United States just reworked its nationality law to eliminate a rare form of accidental statelessness last month, and the United Kingdom itself was applauded by the U.N. Refugee Agency last year for introducing a mechanism that created a path to legal status for stateless persons.

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March 18, 2014

By Elizabeth Gibson^*

The U.S. State Department has just rolled out a new policy that should help reduce a rare form of statelessness caused by a conflict of laws related to Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART).

Technologies designed to help infertile couples have children have greatly improved over the past few decades. The use of egg and sperm donors as well as gestational surrogates has become increasingly common, and last month nine Swedish women made headlines for receiving womb transplants.

However, the law has often struggled to keep pace with the evolving definition of what it means to be a mother or father, especially as couples travel across borders in search of cheaper or newer procedures. In some cases, couples have used Assisted Reproductive Technology overseas only to later be told that they cannot take their newborn home because conflicting laws say the child is not their own or does not qualify for citizenship in their home country.

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February 08, 2014