Kenya Nubians among 12 million stateless people-UN report
What you need to know:
-Up to 12 million people in the world are stateless
-Of several groups affected by statelessness, the Kenyan Nubians are the best known.
-Countries with the greatest numbers of stateless people, for which estimates are known, are Estonia, Iraq, Kenya, Latvia, Myanmar, Nepal, Syria and Thailand.
-While their families may have lived for generations in a particular country, on paper they don’t exist anywhere. They are people without a nationality.
-Because stateless people are not citizens of the country where they live (or of any other country), they are often denied basic rights and access to employment, housing, education, health care and pensions.
-They may not be able to own property, open a bank account, get married legally or register the birth of a child.
Some face long periods of detention, because they cannot prove who they are or where they are from
-While the full scope of statelessness across the globe is only just becoming known, UNHCR has found that the problem is particularly acute in South East Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and various countries in Africa, with pockets of stateless people throughout the world.
Kenya’s Nubians are among some 12 million people around the world who do not have citizenship of any country and are being denied basic human rights as a result, the UN has said.
With the worrying statistics the UN is now calling for more countries to sign up to two conventions on statelessness.
“Of several groups affected by statelessness, the Kenyan Nubians are the best known. They are descendants of Sudanese soldiers recruited by the British to fight for them in East Africa during the colonial period. They also fought in both world wars as part of the King’s African Rifles,” reads the latest UN report in part.
The report says after independence in 1963, the Nubians remained in Kenya where they had lived for generations, but lacked the rights of full citizenship.
The well-organized community has however led a strong campaign to redress their plight and for the first time, the 2009 Kenyan census included Nubians as a recognized ethnic group.
“The Nubians also have improved access to identification documents, which has a direct impact on their access to other essential rights, such as education and employment. Moreover, Kenya’s new constitution (2010) has brought positive reforms that will hopefully reduce statelessness in general, including granting gender equality in citizenship laws.”
The UN report says the issue is becoming worse as stateless children are born to stateless parents.
"These people are in desperate need of help because they live in a nightmarish legal limbo," argues Antonio Guterres of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“Putting precise figures on the numbers of stateless people is inherently difficult because few countries have procedures to identify the stateless,” explains Mark Manly, UNHCR’s chief expert on statelessness. UNHCR estimates are based on census counts, surveys and other sources, including government estimates.
Apart from the misery caused to the people themselves, adds Mr Guteres, the effect of marginalising whole groups of people across generations creates great stress in the societies they live in and is sometimes a source of conflict.
“Due to their lack of nationality, stateless people can face a whole range of problems including issues owning property, opening a bank account, getting married legally or registering the birth of a child,” adds the report.
UNHCR officials say measuring statelessness is difficult at best, because those affected have no legal identity and remain hidden.
“It is not simply a matter of counting. The first question to ask is: “Who should be counted?” A thorough analysis of a country’s citizenship laws and how they are applied is necessary, as well as a parallel examination of the laws and practice of other relevant countries… By any measure, statelessness is a multifaceted problem that affects people across the world,” the report concludes.
UNHCR recognizes it has insufficient data on stateless populations and is taking steps to address this problem by raising awareness of the international legal definition to determine who qualifies as a stateless person. The organization is working to improve the guidelines it uses to determine how statistics and qualitative information on relevant stateless populations can be gathered.
August 30, 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the UNHCR is stepping up efforts to resolve the ongoing plight of the stateless. In December this year (2011) UNHCR will hold a ministerial-level meeting in Geneva to present an opportunity for more states to join together to resolve the problem of statelessness.
Only 66 states are signed up to the 1954 Convention entitling stateless people to minimum standards of treatment while a mere 38 are party to the 1961 Convention which provides a legal framework to help states reduce statelessness.
"After 50 years, these conventions have attracted only a small number of states…it's shameful that millions of people are living without nationality - a fundamental human right '' Mr Guterres added.
