Introduction

Thank you for joining us today to help launch this important campaign to end statelessness in the next decade, and thank you High Commissioner Guterres for UNHCR’s leadership on this issue.

I want to briefly say a few words about who the stateless are, why Americans should care about them, and what the USG is doing about the situation.

Who are the Stateless?

There are at least10 million stateless persons around the world, including over 210,000 in our part of the world, the Americas. Over one third of the stateless are children. I believe that many Americans do not understand the plight of stateless people because we rarely encounter it ourselves. Children born overseas to American parents and anyone born here in the United States have the right to U.S. citizenship.

But this doesn’t happen in many other countries around the world. Other countries do not give automatic citizenship to those born within their borders.

In 27 countries, children can be left stateless because women do not have the same rights as men to confer nationality. So if a woman gives birth and the child’s father is not around to confer his nationality, the baby may be denied the mother’s citizenship, leaving the child with no citizenship at all.

This has happened to thousands of Syrian refugee children born without documentation, and without fathers present to help secure their nationality. The war has torn families apart. Yet despite these circumstances, in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria as well, a father must be present for a baby to be granted citizenship.

And as a result, these children, who have already faced unspeakable violence and instability in their lives, and will have difficulty attending school, will also face the new and profound challenge of having no nationality. It is a tragedy happening now.

Last year, when I traveled to Kuwait for the first pledging conference for Syrian refugees, I also made time to meet with some activists concerned about statelessness in the Gulf. These were all Kuwaiti women --who are speaking out in support of the Bidoon population. This is a stateless population of over 100,000 people living in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Gulf.

The Bidoon were left without a nationality when Kuwait became independent in 1961.

Let’s face it: These people were already marginalized but their lack of nationality makes their situation worse. And it is a problem that not only hurts the Bidoon population. It affects Kuwaiti society overall by creating a marginalized and vulnerable group that faces huge barriers to becoming self-sufficient.

So why should Americans care? What are we doing about Statelessness?

Americans should care for several reasons. We want to stop needless suffering and indignity.

Seeing individuals stripped of rights and protections, branded as outcasts, and not recognized as equal in dignity and rights, clashes with our values as Americans. So does the notion that children inherit this unfair status and pass it on to their children. We believe that all people are created equal.

This is a solvable problem. Already we have seen instances where countries ended this type of discrimination. For instance, in Bangladesh in 2008, a High Court ruling recognized 300,000 Urdu-speakers as citizens. And in Cote d’Ivoire in 2013, amendments to legislation allowed long-term stateless residents to acquire nationality. That legal reform enabled many of the 700,000 stateless persons in Cote d’Ivoire to become citizens. UNHCR tells us that since 2003, over four million stateless persons have acquired a nationality.

Here’s what we are doing:

We support the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ mandate to prevent and reduce statelessness, and to protect stateless persons. The United States is the largest single donor to UNHCR, providing over $1.2 billion to UNHCR in FY 2014. These contributions to UNHCR’s core budget help fund its efforts to address statelessness.

We use diplomacy to mobilize other governments to prevent and resolve situations that leave people stateless. For example, we advocate reforms to address statelessness in the Human Rights Council when it meets in Geneva and we encourage other governments to support us in this effort.

In 2011, the U.S. government launched the Women’s Nationality Initiative. Its goal is to get countries to change nationality laws that discriminate against women, because these laws are a major cause of statelessness.

As part of this Initiative, the United States put forward a resolution on the right to a nationality with a focus on women and children at the 20^th session of the UN Human Rights Council in 2012. The resolution highlighted women’s equal right to a nationality. This includes being able to acquire and retain nationality and transmit it to their children on an equal basis with men. This effort is picking up momentum. Forty-nine governments co-sponsored the resolution and it passed by consensus – a significant achievement.

Finally, the United States is pleased to support the International Campaign to End Gender Discrimination in Nationality Laws. UNHCR is a member of the Steering Committee for this campaign, with the Women’s Refugee Commission, other NGOs, and Tilburg University. The campaign conducts advocacy in 12 countries around the world, and aims to host a side event to Beijing +20 commemorations at the Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March 2015.

This latest campaign, UNHCR’s Global Action Plan to End Statelessness, is ambitious but it should be achievable, if each of us – as citizens, leaders, advocates, government officials – pledges to engage and to push for needed reforms. With enough political will, this problem can be resolved. And in fact, statelessness can be ended in our lifetimes. So I applaud UNHCR for launching this campaign.