When you don't exist

By: Bikal Dhungel 

The UNHCR estimates that there are at least 10 million stateless people in the world, as much as the population of Portugal. Those without any documents are subjected to discrimination in many aspects of life concerning employment, education etc. they also cannot travel freely as travel documents is required in most border control. In addition, in many countries there are people who lack legal documents though they are citizens. In rich countries on the other hand, there are so called ' Illegal Immigrants' without a valid residence permit to stay. In this case, they are regarded illegal hence cannot participate in legal employments, in most cases barred from health services and more likely to face other forms of discrimination. In the United States alone, it was estimated that roughly half million illegal immigrants enter the country alone. In the UK, there might be plus minus half million illegal immigrants. In Germany, the figure can be as high as one million. However, these numbers are never accurate as you cannot count precisely. Nobody would admit that they are illegally in that country. They face same kind of problems as stateless people do.

Still, the matter of illegal immigration and statelessness in different. Illegal immigrants have chosen to go to a country for whatever reason whereas the stateless people are mostly the victims of political consequences and to be precise, when country unions dissolve. This is why the countries of former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have most stateless people. When Soviet Union collapsed, many countries were formed. Many of them settled in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia etc. The newly formed government of Estonia and Lithuania said that some group of people are actually ethnic Russians, so after the collapse, they had to return to mainland Russia. So they were not granted Lithuanian or Estonian citizenship. Similarly, when Yugoslavia was dissolved, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and other countries were formed. Bosnian minorities living in Serbia were not considered the citizens of Serbia and are still barred from getting a Serbian citizenship. The same story goes again and again in other parts of the world. World's largest Refugee Camp is located in Dadaab, Kenya. Hundreds of thousands of Somalians, Ethiopians and Eritreans live there. Many of them already since one generation. The children of these refugees do not get Kenyan citizenship, neither Somalian because they cannot go back. Similarly, there are Palestinian refugees in Jordan, now Syrians in Turkey, Afghans in Pakistan, Nigerians in Cameroon, Bhutanese in Nepal, Tibetans in India and many others who cannot be considered a citizen of a place they live. Many of them also live in rich countries as refugees. But most of the western European and North american countries grant the foreigners their citizenship when they live there for certain years. To avoid discrimination, there are also schemes that support people who is stateless. So, countries with a strong democratic form of governance and human rights law have the most human system. But unfortunately, in most parts of the world stateless people face injustice, discrimination and every form of inhuman behaviour.

It is mostly not possible to simply create a state somewhere because all the lands in the world belong some country and most of them are reluctant to give their lands or even sell it to create a new nation. Historically, it is true but sad that most stateless people were subjected to mass murder and genocide. One such example are the Jews who were living all over Europe and did not have their own state. So, Jews were expelled frequently from many European countries and moved to other ones until the Holocaust took place when Adolf Hitler killed more than 6 million Jews within few years. For this reason, considering hundreds of years of discrimination, the Jews formed the state of Israel where they call home. Today, Jews from all over the world can go to Israel and become the citizen. So, only once the state of Israel was created, their security was guaranteed. They became a member of the United Nations and other organisations and even have their own army. So, having a state or belonging to a state guarantees ones security though it is a very complicated issue internationally. Having said that, it might be a genuine thing to start thinking about this for people scattered elsewhere in the world. One group who are now being the scapegoats in European politics are the Romas and Sintis who might never get their own state, and hence will be discriminated further. In this case, integrating them in any society can be one option.