Ethnic and Racial Discrimination: An Underlying Theme of Statelessness
Madhulika Bhatnagar & Aastha Saxena
I. INTRODUCTION
The International Legal definition of a stateless person is set out under Article 1 of the 1954 Convention relating to the Stateless Persons, according to which, a stateless person is a person who is not considered a national by any state under the operation of its law. Several other definitions in this regard have been coined since the time when the problem was first encountered.
A person not having a nationality under the law of any state is called statelessness, apatride, apolide or heinatlos. A stateless person has also been defined as one who is unable or unwilling to avail himself of the protection of the Government
…show more content…
II. CAUSES OF STATELESSNESS
The UNHCR identifies three main causes of statelessness. They are – incongruences in nationality laws, redrawing of borders and ethnic and racial discrimination.
A. INCONGRUENCES IN NATIONALITY LAWS
Citizenship laws are one of the most important laws for a nation as they determine who all will be governed and protected by the authorities in a nation thus these laws need to be complex and varied. But these complex and varied citizenship laws can also give rise to statelessness. In some countries, citizenship is automatically lost after prolonged residence in another country. These nationality laws often tend to be discriminatory in nature too. In a significant number of countries only men can pass the citizenship to their children whereas the laws in 27 countries do not let women pass on their citizenship. If a woman from one of these countries marries a foreigner her children can end up
…show more content…
One historical example is that of the European colonists in the Americas, who conquered territories inhibited by Native Americans, displacing the indigenous population from its ancestral lands. Another example is the case of the Palestinians, who were expelled from Israel to make room for the Jewish state in 1948. This process is considered as a type of ethnic cleansing. Usually the perpetrators want to achieve simultaneous goals i.e., to wipe the region clean of the expelled ethnic group & to decimate it in the