For many people, moving from one country to another and showing their passport has been a frequent practice. However, for others that is impossible, and not because they have committed a crime. Up next we will tell you what stateless people are and we will review some proper names that perhaps you knew but did not know that they had this condition.
A stateless person is a person who is not considered a national by any State. In other words, he or she does not have the nationality of any country. It is currently estimated that there are 10 million worldwide.
This implies a problem for these people, since no state guarantees them rights. That is, they have no possibility of traveling to a country other than the one they are in, open a bank account, buy a property or sign a rental agreement. In many cases, they do not even have access to education or health or to have a registered job.
In some cases the person is stateless from birth and in others it happens during life. But what are the causes that lead a person to statelessness? Well, they are very diverse, and in general law, politics or a combination of factors are mixed.
In many cases it may be due to legal loopholes, that arise from the fact that not all countries grant nationality in the same way. There are two main currents in this matter. On the one hand, the so-called ius sanguinis: there parents transmit their nationality to their children.
On the other hand, ius soli: the person acquires the nationality of the country if he or she was born in its territory. But let's imagine this case: a person is born in the territory of a country that only gives nationality to the children of its citizens. But this person's parents were born in a country with other legislation, reason why they do not transmit the nationality.
This would be a typical case of a stateless person, but things can get even more complex. Although it may seem like a reality from another century, there are more than 20 countries where nationality is transmitted by blood but only from the father. That is, if a woman is a single mother or the father is unknown, the child will be born stateless.
An interesting case to understand the reality of stateless people is the one of Maha Mamo. Her parents are Syrians. Her father is a Christian and her mother a Muslim.
Inter-religious marriages are not allowed in Syria, so they decided to move to Lebanon. There Maha and her siblings were born. However, Lebanon only gives citizenship to children of Lebanese, so they did not obtain that nationality.
And Syria did not give it to them either, as this country only gives it to the children of registered marriages. That is why Maha was born stateless. When she grew up, she wanted to travel to another country, but it was not possible since she had no documentation.
So she began to explore the possibility that other states could help her. She did it in Brazil: in 2016 she finally had her first documents. She currently lives there and has rights as a resident, although she hopes to access to a fully nationality.
Just as there are these individual cases, we also find with entire communities that are discriminated against. At the historical level, we can point to the case of German Jews. In 1935, the Nazi government denied them nationality and they became stateless.
It would be only a foretaste of the subsequent atrocities. Today we find the Rohingya. This is a Muslim ethnic group that in 2017 was the victim of a genocide in Myanmar, according to the UN.
Many went to neighboring Bangladesh, but were not well received there either. It is that neither of the two countries considers them national, so they remain stateless. There is also the case of Haitians in the Dominican Republic.
A 2013 court ruling harmed around 200,000 people born between 1929 and 2007. These are children of Haitians born in the Dominican Republic whose parents were in an irregular situation. Another case of neighboring countries today is the one of Venezuelans in Colombia.
Following the crisis, millions of people migrated abroad. In this case the problem is with babies born in Colombian territory, since this country gives nationality if at least one of the parents is Colombian. Last year, the government of this country recognized that this is an exceptional situation.
That is why it granted nationality to these 24,000 people who were born since 2015. But there are even stranger stories. For example, people who are abroad and their country ceases to exist.
This happened to the Koreans who were in Japan when the peninsula was divided into North Korea and South Korea. My country no longer has recognition and then my passport is not valid? Perhaps many have remembered Tom Hanks playing Viktor Navorski in The Terminal.
Although it was a fiction, it was inspired by the life of Mehran Karimi Nasseri. But his story is even more complex than the one on the film. Iran, his country of birth, expelled him for protesting against the regime in the mid-1970s and withdrew his nationality.
He traveled as a stateless person in Europe for some years until Belgium received him as a refugee. In 1988 he wanted to travel to the United Kingdom, but lost his documentation, so they did not allow him to enter. He was then returned to Paris, from where his flight had departed.
He could not enter France, because he had no documentation. And he also didn't have permission to go back to Belgium, since he had lost his refugee status after leaving the country. The thing is, he stayed at the airport.
In total there were 17 years and 11 months. In 2006 he had a health problem, he was taken to a residence and his later life was no longer known. Currently, one of the best known people who was stateless is Gonzalo Higuaín.
The footballer, who played for River Plate, Real Madrid and Juventus, He is the sixth highest goalscorer in the Argentine National Team. However, he was not Argentine. His father Jorge was also a soccer player.
In 1987 he played on a French team, in the town of Brest, and Gonzalo was born there. The issue is that France grants citizenship to the children of French. And Argentina to those born in its territory, so Gonzalo did not receive either of the two nationalities.
If his parents had listed it at the consulate back then, Gonzalo would have adopted Argentine nationality, but they did not. That is why for years he remained stateless. When he was already a professional soccer player, he received an offer from the French coach to play for that team.
but he chose to do it for Argentina after solving the legal questions. Although this is an anecdotal case, there are millions of people who cannot access to basic rights for being stateless. How could these problems be solved?
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