We are on the verge of witnessing a huge human rights crises, but almost no one is talking about it.
At the end of the day today, the Dominican Republic might be deporting hundreds of thousands of people, making them stateless just for being or having characteristics of Haitian descent.
What does it mean to be stateless?
- Your citizenship is stripped away.
- You have no central government accountable for upholding and protecting your civil rights.
- You can’t have a passport, which makes it almost impossible to go to another country legally.
Being stateless means being extremely vulnerable.
As surprising as it might be that these citizens are becoming stateless while our mainstream media remains silent, this crisis comes out of a long history of tensions between Haiti and the Dominican Republic that is linked to racism.
The current situation stems from the September 2013 decision by The Dominican Republic’s constitutional court that ruled that illegal migrants do not have the right to citizenship.
In the past, the Dominican Republic offered citizenship to anyone born in the country. The only exceptions were for “foreigners in transit” — uniquely applied to diplomats and people stopping through from Point A to get to Point B. But over the years this category has come to encompass non-residents, undocumented migrants and people who don’t have a birth certificate.
So why does this affect Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent?
- Contemporary Haitian migrant workers can’t work, despite the fact that many of them left Haiti for better economic opportunities in the Dominican Republic.
- Many Dominicans of Haitian descent don’t have birth certificates because they were born in rural areas with midwives, not in hospitals, and consequently never received one.
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