ISI Database on Statelessness and
Human Rights

7. Recalling its guidelines for reporting under the Convention, 3 the Committee recommends that the State party collect and provide to the Committee reliable, updated and comprehensive statistics on the demographic composition of the population, including on ethnic origin, based on the principle of self-identification, as well as on non-citizens, including refugees, asylum-seekers, migrants and stateless persons, together with socioeconomic indicators, disaggregated by ethnic origin, gender, age and region, in order to provide the Committee with an empirical basis to evaluate the enjoyment in the State party of the rights enshrined in the Convention.

17. (...) (c) Undertake public education campaigns on the rights enshrined in the Convention and on how to file complaints of racial discrimination, particularly among Roma communities, stateless persons and migrant workers;

29. Recalling its general recommendation No. 27 (2000) on discrimination against Roma and its general recommendation No. 36 (2020) on preventing and combating racial profiling by law enforcement officials, the Committee recommends that the State party adopt and implement a comprehensive policy to address the structural discrimination faced by Roma and Dom communities to ensure their access to education, employment, health care and housing and ensure that all members of the Roma and Dom communities are granted official identity documents.

31. Recalling the relevant recommendation in its previous concluding observations,9 the Committee recommends that the State party continue to develop effective measures to ensure birth registration and issue birth certificates for all children without discrimination, and irrespective of the possession of identity documents by their mothers, including mothers who are asylum seekers or undocumented migrants. It also recommends that the State party strengthen its efforts to resolve the remaining statelessness cases, including by developing and adopting a legislative framework for a statelessness determination procedure to enable all stateless persons, without discrimination, to have their status ascertained and to obtain identity documents. It further recommends that the State party adopt measures to ensure that refugees, asylum seekers and stateless persons can enjoy their economic and social rights without discrimination, in particular their access to education and health-care services.

9. In the Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967, there are now five million stateless Palestinians living without rights, in an acute state of subjugation, and with no path to self-determination or a viable independent state which the international community has repeatedly promised is their right. Over the past five decades, Israel has created 300 Jewish-only civilian settlements, all of them illegal, with 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers now living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the midst of, but apart from, three million Palestinians. In Gaza, Israel has barricaded the two million Palestinians into what former British Prime Minister David Cameron called “an open-air prison,” a method of population control unique in the modern world. In recent years, Israeli prime ministers have regularly and openly proclaimed that the country’s rule over the Palestinians and their land is permanent and that no Palestinian state will emerge.

46. (...) Among recent and current Israeli political leaders, the only debate regarding the Palestinians has come down to tertiary issues: whether the Palestinians will be granted a shrunken statelet with its own postage stamps and a seat at the United Nations, or alternatively be kept in their present state of statelessness. Either way, the intent is for the Palestinians to be encased in a political ossuary, a museum relic of 21st century colonialism.

25. (...)The Committee recommends that the State party, in implementing temporary special measures, pay special attention to the provision of pensions and services to elderly women, along with the provision of services to Bedouin, stateless and migrant women and girls, women and girls with disabilities, women and girls in remote areas, and women and girls who are victims of violence.

41. Recalling its previous concluding observations (CEDAW/C/ARE/CO/1, para. 33, and CEDAW/C/ARE/CO/2-3, para. 36), the Committee recommends that the State party grant Emirati women the same rights as Emirati men to acquire, change and retain their nationality and to confer it on their children and foreign spouses. In this regard, the Committee recommends that the State party revise its legislation, withdraw its reservation to article 9 of the Convention, and ratify the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 and the Protocol of 1967 thereto, the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons of 1954 and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness of 1961. The Committee also recommends that the State party regularize the situation of stateless women and girls and ensure their right to a nationality, repeal provisions that make the provision of birth certificates contingent on the production of a valid marriage certificate, and collect sex- and age-disaggregated data on the number of stateless persons in the State party.

43. The Committee recommends that the State party take specific measures to ensure that stateless and migrant girls have adequate access to education and educational support programmes on an equitable footing with Emirati nationals, including through considering the adoption and effective implementation of temporary special measures, in line with article 4 (1) of the Convention and the Committee’s general recommendation No. 25, incorporating time-bound goals and quotas directed towards the achievement of de facto or substantive equality of migrant and stateless girls.

19. Taking note of target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Committee recommends that the State party:

(a) Strengthen its efforts to achieve universal registration, including through the expansion of electronic registration systems throughout the State party, capacity-building of officials on the use and management of electronic systems, introduction of mobile registration units in rural areas, and public awareness-raising on the importance of birth registrations;

(b) Prohibit the practice of informal fees for the issuance of birth certificates;

(c) Ensure that all children, including Khmer Krom, ethnic Vietnamese and migrant children, have access to birth registration and identity documents;

(d) Develop a procedure to determine statelessness in order to properly identify and protect stateless children;

(e) Consider ratifying the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

44. Noting with deep concern the discrimination faced by children belonging to minority or indigenous groups, which places them in particularly vulnerable situations, the Committee recommends that the State party combat discrimination faced by children belonging to minority or indigenous groups, including children of Vietnamese origin and Khmer Krom children, and ensure their full and equal access to birth registration and identity documents, health care, adequate housing, education and all other services.

140.98 Take specific measures to guarantee the effective implementation of the right to nationality of stateless persons and their children born in Zimbabwe and guarantee their inclusion in society. 

18.     Education:  Nearly every Rohingya parent who the Special Rapporteur spoke with cited education shortfalls as their most pressing concern for their children.  52 percent of the estimated 918,841 Rohingya (or 477,797) in Bangladesh are children under the age of-18. The Special Rapporteur takes note that the education needs for the children and youth in camps are tremendous.  In 2021, an estimated 515,042 Rohingya aged 3-24 needed education opportunities.  However, the Special Rapporteur notes 2021 funding targets in the Joint Response Plan only aimed to provide education, to 390,923 of them (100 percent of the 3-5 age group, 100 percent of 6-14, 70 percent of 15-18, and 15 percent of 19-24). According to the Inter-Sector Coordination Group (ISCG) Education Sector only 62 percent of the education plan was in fact funded (as of 30 October 2021). Bangladesh needs a significantly stronger level of support from the international community if this gap is going to be overcome.

23.     A Bangladesh senior official responded to the Special Rapporteur’s concerns regarding the education facility closures by stressing that (1) “these [Rohingya] are the people who have never been allowed to go to the schools in Myanmar,” (2) there is a lack of qualified teachers in the Rohingya community to provide good education, and (3) there is a potential for radicalization to occur in the unauthorized private schools.   The Special Rapporteur is concerned that a senior government official would dismiss concerns about education for Rohingya children because of the horrible conditions that Rohingya families faced in Rakhine State.  Reducing teacher salaries—as the 13 December circular mandates—is counterproductive to recruiting better qualified teachers. To address the potential for radicalization, closer engagement with the Rohingya community, the promotion of a vibrant moderate Rohingya civil society, and similar measures would be a more equitable approach than the closure of all private schools. 

85.     The roughly 600,000 Rohingya in Rakhine State continue to have their human rights systematically violated. More than 130,000 remain confined to IDP camps and even those living in villages are denied the right to move freely. Most villagers need to apply for permission to travel between locations in Rakhine State, a system that is enforced at checkpoints manned by security forces throughout the region. Since the coup, Rohingya have faced renewed arrest for undocumented travel and, as of mid-2021, 67 Rohingya were on trial while 58 had been convicted and sentenced up to two years for travel outside of Rakhine State. Travel restrictions and nighttime curfews can have life-and-death consequences, especially for those seeking treatment for acute medical conditions. An outbreak of diarrhea in Rohingya IDP camps that began in January 2022 has led to deaths that could have been prevented by timely medical treatment.

86.     The Rohingya continue to be effectively cut off from access to citizenship in Myanmar. Few Rohingya are able to meet the documentary hurdles imposed by the 1982 Citizenship Law, which is applied in an extremely discriminatory manner against the Rohingya. Rohingya persons are by-and-large unwilling to accept National Verification cards (NVC) because of the stipulation that they register as “Bengali,” effectively identifying them as foreigners.

87.     No progress has been made towards the safe, dignified and voluntary return of Rohingya who were driven from their homes. Many of the properties which belonged to Rohingya in villages from which they were driven by attacks in 2012, 2016 and 2017 have been razed and are now the site of new commercial projects, government buildings or military installations. Given current conditions, the Special Rapporteur considers the situation in Rakhine State to be unconducive to the voluntary, sustainable return of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh.

32. The Committee recommends that the State party:

(a) Reform its birth registration and identity procedure, with a view to creating an equal and accessible birth registration and identity procedure for women and their children, and give full effect to the 1954 and 1961 conventions relating to the status of stateless persons, recognizing the legal status of children born to undocumented women;

(b) Establish criteria and gender-sensitive mechanisms throughout all procedures for the recognition of the condition of statelessness and support for stateless persons by the State.

18.     The Committee is concerned that conditions under which stateless children may apply for Dutch nationality under the present Nationality Act, which among others requires three years of legal residency, are very strict. Recalling its previous recommendations, the Committee recommends that the State party:

(a)        Ensure that all children born in Aruba and Curaçao, including those with an irregular residence status, have access to birth registration and/or identity cards, and strengthen legal pathways to acquire a nationality;

(b)        Guarantee all stateless children born or present within the territory of the State party the right to acquire nationality irrespective of residency status;

(c)        Implement measures for ensuring that children with an “unknown” nationality, a status that leaves them unable to be registered as stateless and obtain international protection, do not remain in such a status for a prolonged period of time;

(d)        Ensure the access to education, health, and social services for stateless children and children with an “unknown” nationality;

(e)        Ensure that no child, including those between 16 and 17 years of age, is deprived of his or her nationality for actions that are considered to constitute a threat to national security, and also consider children’s best interests when such withdrawals of nationality are imposed on parents.

37. (...) (c) Ensure that the rights of asylum-seeking and refugee children in all constituent countries are guaranteed under legislation, including by: (i) ensuring that such children are registered and issued with legal identification documents;

6. Recalling its reporting guidelines4 and its general recommendation No. 8 (1990) concerning the interpretation and application of article 1 (1) and (4) of the Convention, the Committee recommends that the State party collect and provide updated statistics on the demographic composition of its population based on self-identification, disaggregated by ethnic group, indigenous people, national origin and language spoken, including data on migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and stateless persons, as well as relevant socioeconomic indicators.

10. The Committee recommends that the State party incorporate all of the substantive provisions of the Convention into its domestic law, with a view to ensuring comprehensive protection against racial discrimination, and that it conduct a systematic review of its laws and policies to guarantee their full conformity with the Convention and that they have no discriminatory impact on the rights of ethnic and ethno-religious groups, indigenous peoples, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and stateless persons.

18. Recalling its general recommendations No. 7 (1985) relating to the implementation of article 4 of the Convention; No. 8 (1990) concerning the interpretation and application of article 1 (1) and (4) of the Convention; No. 15 (1993) on article 4 of the Convention; and No. 35 (2013) on combating racist hate speech, the Committee urges the State party to: (...)

(d) Launch awareness-raising and educational campaigns to eliminate prejudices and negative stereotypes against ethnic and ethno-religious groups, indigenous peoples, people of African descent, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and stateless persons;

36. Recalling its general recommendation No. 30 (2004) on discrimination against non-citizens, the Committee recommends that the State party:

(a) Conduct a review of its laws and regulations on access to and the transmission of citizenship in order to reduce the risk of statelessness;

(b) Abolish the practice of mass and discriminatory collection of DNA samples from certain groups of stateless persons as a means to prove their right to citizenship, and facilitate their access to citizenship through alternative and non-discriminatory means in line with international human rights norms and standards;

(c) Intensify its efforts to facilitate access to birth registration and citizenship, by putting in place measures targeted for ethnic and ethno-religious groups, indigenous peoples, migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers, including in remote areas.

Ratification of other treaties

41. (...) The Committee encourages the State party to accede to the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

51.190 Continue to promote the human rights of stateless persons, particularly in education, social protection, and access to birth registration.