UNHCR defines de facto stateless persons as those who are “outside the country of their nationality who are unable or, for valid reasons, are unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country” (Massey 2010, 61). Other perspectives exist, however. For instance, in some cases de facto statelessness is described as the condition of being unable to prove one’s nationality. This may result because an individual’s birth is never registered, or because he or she is an undocumented migrant or a trafficked person, or because identity documents are purposely destroyed.8 In other cases, de facto statelessness is defined as the lack of “effective” citizenship, which can mean a lack of government protection9 or the inability to enjoy rights.10 Additionally, in the more recent climate change work on statelessness, UNHCR asserts that those people who lose their state of citizenship due to rising sea levels could be rendered de facto stateless (Park 2011, 14).11 The number of stateless persons, de jure and de facto, therefore, may be very high globally at present (and in the future).
Although I focus on the Caribbean in this book, stateless people are found in all areas of the world: from Central Asia to Western Europe and the African Great Lakes. The majority of stateless persons are found in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South and South East Asia, however (see Figure 1). The number of known stateless populations in these latter areas ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions and includes individuals of Russian descent in Estonia and Latvia, certain national minorities in the Russian Federation, Bidoon in Kuwait,12 Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, highland tribes in Thailand, Rohingya13 in Myanmar, and Lhotshampas in Bhutan, among others.14 Figure 1, which does not capture the stateless populations in states for which data are unavailable (such as Australia, The Bahamas, Canada, or South Africa), presents the scope of UNHCR’s known stateless populations.
Causes of Statelessness
When statelessness became a prominent international concern during the World War II era, it was in the context of geopolitical upheaval, war, and genocide. Groups of people, once recognized as nationals of a given state, were stripped of their citizenship, often on a discriminatory basis. Statelessness as a result of arbitrary denationalization policies did not vanish when the war ended or when the UDHR proclaimed in Article 15 that everyone has a right to a nationality and not to be arbitrarily deprived of it, however. In fact, the “Deprivation or denial of nationality based on discriminatory practices, particularly against racial, ethnic or religious minorities … is perhaps the most important cause of statelessness worldwide” today (Manly 2007, 256). In Chapters 3 and 4, I explain how statelessness is generated on these grounds in the specific contexts of The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.
Figure 1. De jure statelessness, 2012. Migration Policy Institute Data Hub, 2015.
Many of those who are denied or deprived of citizenship on discriminatory grounds are found in democratizing regimes or in newly formed states that are still in the process of nation building. For example, democratization has had the “effect of triggering an obsession with belonging” in Africa (Geschiere 2009, 6). Consequently, from Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon to Zambia and Zimbabwe, people have been turned into “foreigners” in their own country because they are not deemed “autochthonous” to the state.15 The process of denationalizing citizens often occurs around election time. Thus, in Cameroon, “Belonging has become a choice weapon for manipulating elections” (52). The NGO Citizenship Rights in Africa, a group that seeks to end statelessness on the continent, records how black Africans in Mauritania, Nubians in Kenya, and various groups in Côte d’Ivoire have been denationalized around election time because they represent political competition.16 Similarly, OSJI observed that “the advent of multi-party democracy in many African States in the 1990s heightened the political significance of distinguishing citizens from noncitizens, and led to a marked increase in attempts to denationalise political opponents or even entire ethnic and social groups” (cited in Kanengoni 2008, 4).17
Statelessness can also be “a by-product of entrenched discrimination and social exclusion,” which is “often closely related to incomplete nation-building” (Manly 2007, 257). Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan observe that democratizing or transitioning regimes often suffer from a “stateness” problem. That is, regimes that are attempting to leave behind a previous authoritarian structure often face a crisis wherein “profound differences about what should actually constitute the polity (or political community) and which demos or demoi (population or populations) should be members of that political community” become problematic (Linz and Stepan 1996, 16). When “profound differences” exist “as to who has the right of citizenship in that state … a ‘stateness’ problem” occurs (16).
The creation of “strangers” and an upsurge in nationalism thus purportedly go hand in hand with democratization processes (Snyder 2000; Geshiere 2009). Many of the groups identified as “strangers” in the nation-building exercise are rendered stateless. For instance, with the exception of Lithuania, the Baltic states excluded ethnic Russians from their understanding of the demos; the Bengalis excluded the Biharis; the Myanmarese omitted the Rohingya; the Bhutanese targeted the Lhotshampa; the Congolese excluded the Banyamulenge; and the Kuwaitis rejected the Bidoon.
This exclusion is often made formal through restrictive or discriminatory citizenship laws. Claude Cahn and Sebihana Skenderovska (2008) observe how many post-Communist states created laws to restrict citizenship, and the concomitant privileges of voting and running for office, to a particular “national” group. Consequently, Serbs and Roma have been excluded from citizenship in Croatia and ethnic Albanians and Roma have been disenfranchised in Macedonia.18 Brad Blitz (2006) discusses the “erasure” of Slovenes shortly after post-Communist independence and Igor Stiks similarly observes how citizenship laws were manipulated in Slovenia “to eliminate a certain number of citizens from the political, social and economic life of the new state” (2006, 492).
Outside of these cases, which clearly violate the UDHR’s Article 15 prohibition on the arbitrary deprivation of nationality, states retain the right to denationalize individuals on other grounds.19 For example, a person may be denationalized for converting to another religion, for failing to renew his or her passport, or for not adapting to a state’s “customs.” As in the early twentieth century, denationalization may occur for residing abroad without permission, committing a crime, or engaging in an act deemed “threatening” or “disloyal” to the state. A person may also be stripped of citizenship if he or she acquires citizenship or seeks asylum in another state. Moreover, denationalization on these and other grounds is not peculiar to democratizing regimes or illiberal states. Developed democracies can and do strip individuals, particularly naturalized persons, of their citizenship.
Whether it is through laws that allow for the denaturalization of those deemed (or suspected) terrorists, those who have committed acts against national security,20 or the revocation of citizenship from those born on the territory “without warning or judicial approval” (Ross and Galey 2014 n. pag.), developed world democracies also engage in practices that force those they consider unworthy of citizenship into liminality or deprive them of membership without consent. In the UK, for instance, people can be stripped of citizenship on these grounds without ensuring they are nationals of another country in practice, rendering them stateless (Bennhold 2014a, b).
In 2014, Canada adopted Bill C-24 (Parliament of Canada 2014), which amends the Canadian Citizenship Act such that dual citizens, or those who have “the possibility of dual citizenship” may be denationalized “for a criminal conviction in another country, even if the other country is undemocratic or lacks the rule of law” (Georgia Straight 2014). According to the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL), “Bill C-24 eliminates any type of hearing in most revocation cases, and replaces it with an administrative