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Statelessness: A Forgotten Crisis

Statelessness: A Forgotten Crisis

   Mira Siegelberg ▪ Fall 2016
   [1475503817SiegelbergConstantineNuer666.jpg]
   The Nubian community has lived in Kenya for over a hundred years, yet
   many became stateless after Kenya’s independence in 1963. For years,
   Nubian youth had to go through a nationality verification process
   called “vetting” in order to obtain a National ID card, and often had
   to wait years or were denied IDs. Two Nubian youth sit in their social
   club in the Kibera slum outside of Nairobi. Both now have their IDs but
   are unemployed after losing out on years’ worth of opportunities. ©
   Greg Constantine.

   Nowhere People
   by Greg Constantine
   Nowhere People, 2015, 374 pp.

   Statelessness is a forgotten crisis. At least that is the claim at the
   heart of a recently inaugurated campaign sponsored by the UN High
   Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to draw attention to the estimated
   10–15 million people who cannot claim citizenship anywhere in the
   world. A person may lose the protection of a state for a variety of
   reasons: the breakdown of political authority, disenfranchisement,
   persecution, or the physical disappearance of state territory due to
   climate change. However, according to international agreements
   established in the wake of the Second World War, the term “stateless
   person” applies only to individuals who are not recognized as nationals
   by any state. Refugees, by contrast, are defined in a separate
   international convention from 1951 as people who generally retain their
   nationality but leave their countries of origin for “reasons of
   persecution.” Such international classifications matter. The
   controversy in the summer of 2015 over whether to call the thousands of
   people fleeing Syria and other conflict-ridden countries “refugees” or
   “migrants” indicates the power of legal definitions to trigger specific
   state obligations. It is also the reason why those in power often
   choose their words so carefully.

   Until quite recently, the international institutions established to
   manage and care for people who have lost state protection treated the
   legally stateless as a marginal issue. While refugee law has developed
   into a fairly robust area of jurisprudence, statelessness has never
   been the subject of sustained legal study. The UN only embarked on its
   campaign to illuminate the plight of the stateless and lobby for their
   enfranchisement in 2014, the same year the first global forum on
   statelessness in the Netherlands brought together humanitarian
   practitioners and scholars to establish statelessness as its own field
   of research.

   How did the loss of nationality become a distinct legal and
   humanitarian issue in the first place? And why was it then forgotten?
   Nationality is a legal status that has evolved since the formation of
   the European early modern state-system to delineate the state’s formal
   obligations toward its subjects. It ensures political recognition both
   in one’s h...

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   Austin Frerick, who launched a bid for Iowa’s third congressional
   district on an antimonopoly platform, dropped out when party leaders
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   courtesy of Austin Frerick.
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   Early voting locations in the Indianapolis metro area in 2016, via
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   An Eritrean refugee in Khartoum. Photo by John Power.
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   Khartoum as seen from the river Nile. Photo by John Power.
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   Common migration routes from East Africa to Europe. Route information
   adapted from the International Organization for Migration, August 2015,
   by Colin Kinniburgh. Countries party to the Khartoum process are shaded
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   At the 1936 International Conference of Business Cycle Institutes,
   sponsored by the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research,
   Vienna. Ludwig von Mises is seated in the center with mustache and
   cigarette. Gottfried Haberler also pictured, at right. (Source)
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   In 1896, William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat from Nebraska, ran for
   president on a fusion ticket with the Populist Party. This cartoonist
   from a Republican magazine thought the “Popocratic” ticket was too
   ideologically mismatched to win. Bryan did lose, but his campaign, the
   first of three he waged for the White House, transformed the Democrats
   into an anti-corporate, pro-labor party. Cartoon from Judge (1896) via
   Library of Congress
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   Sketch for a 1976 poster by the New York Wages for Housework Committee
   (MayDay Rooms / Creative Commons)
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   Keith Vaughan, “Drawing of a seated male nude,” 1949. Courtesy the
   estate of Keith Vaughan / Creative Commons.
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   Political strategist Jessica Byrd. Courtesy of Three Points Strategies.
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   Stacey Abrams, Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives
   and Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia. Photo courtesy of
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   A drawing made for the author by a five-year-old girl in detention at
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   A drawing made for the author by a five-year-old girl in detention at
   the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (Courtesy of
   Nara Milanich)
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   A drawing made for the author by a five-year-old girl in detention at
   the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (Courtesy of
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   Mayor Bill de Blasio inaugurates a new bus line in the Bronx, September
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   Luxury condominium towers under construction in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,
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   Hydrocarbons from the Williams Central compressor, photographed with a
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   Project 2014.
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   Composite of drilling rig image from Rome, Pennsylvania and hundreds of
   images taken by a Hop Bottom, Pennsylvania resident of the volume of
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   the operation of a nearby shale gas well pad. © Nina Berman/Marcellus
   Shale Documentary Project 2015.
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   The nightmare situations preppers imagine are already happening—to
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   Maria relief efforts in Puerto Rico, October 2017 (Agustín Montañez /
   National Guard)
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   From the music video for “Unforgettable,” by French Montana, featuring
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   Wizkid performing at Royal Albert Hall, London, September 2017 (Michael
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   The cover of L’antinorm, published by the Homosexual Front for
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   Jair Bolsonaro, at a debate about violence against women in Brazil’s
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   The front page of the Canard, February 28, 2018. Courtesy of Le Canard
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   A state employee reads the newspaper at the reception of the Defense
   Committee of the Revolution (CDR). March 2016, Havana, Cuba. Photo by
   David Himbert / Hans Lucas Studio.
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   Students rally in support of the lecturers’ strike, February 23
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   Part of a much larger painted banner in Bristol, February 28 (Bristol
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   Audience members waiting for the program to begin at a MORENA rally,
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   MORENA supporter leafletting against energy reforms, 2013 (Eneas De
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   Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the campaign trail during his previous
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   Courtesy of Robert Greene
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   At a protest against the alleged Pizzagate conspiracy, Washington,
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                                  The Kurds

     [W]hen we refer to all Kurdish fighters synonymously, we simply blur
     the fact that they have very different politics. . . right now, yes,
     the people are facing the Islamic State threat, so it’s very
     important to have a unified focus. But the truth is, ideologically
     and politically these are very, very different systems. Actually
     almost opposite to each other. —Dilar Dirik, “Rojava vs. the World,”
     February 2015

   The Kurds, who share ethnic and cultural similarities with Iranians and
   are mostly Muslim by religion (largely Sunni but with many minorities),
   have long struggled for self-determination. After World War I, their
   lands were divided up between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. In Iran,
   though there have been small separatist movements, Kurds are mostly
   subjected to the same repressive treatment as everyone else (though
   they also face Persian and Shi’ite chauvinism, and a number of Kurdish
   political prisoners were recently executed). The situation is worse in
   Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, where the Kurds are a minority people
   subjected to ethnically targeted violations of human rights.

   Iraq: In 1986–89, Saddam Hussein conducted a genocidal campaign in
   which tens of thousands were murdered and thousands of Kurdish villages
   destroyed, including by bombing and chemical warfare. After the first
   Gulf War, the UN sought to establish a safe haven in parts of
   Kurdistan, and the United States and UK set up a no-fly zone. In 2003,
   the Kurdish peshmerga sided with the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam
   Hussein. In 2005, after a long struggle with Baghdad, the Iraqi Kurds
   won constitutional recognition of their autonomous region, and the
   Kurdistan Regional Government has since signed oil contracts with a
   number of Western oil companies as well as with Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan
   has two main political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)
   and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), both clan-based and
   patriarchal.

   Turkey: For much of its modern history, Turkey has pursued a policy of
   forced assimilation towards its minority peoples; this policy is
   particularly stringent in the case of the Kurds—until recently referred
   to as the “mountain Turks”—who make up 20 percent of the total
   population. The policy has included forced population transfers; a ban
   on use of the Kurdish language, costume, music, festivals, and names;
   and extreme repression of any attempt at resistance. Large revolts were
   suppressed in 1925, 1930, and 1938, and the repression escalated with
   the formation of the PKK as a national liberation party, resulting in
   civil war in the Kurdish region from 1984 to 1999.

   Syria: Kurds make up perhaps 15 percent of the population and live
   mostly in the northeastern part of Syria. In 1962, after Syria was
   declared an Arab republic, a large number of Kurds were stripped of
   their citizenship and declared aliens, which made it impossible for
   them to get an education, jobs, or any public benefits. Their land was
   given to Arabs. The PYD was founded in 2003 and immediately banned; its
   members were jailed and murdered, and a Kurdish uprising in Qamishli
   was met with severe military violence by the regime. When the uprising
   against Bashar al Assad began as part of the Arab Spring, Kurds
   participated, but after 2012, when they captured Kobani from the Syrian
   army, they withdrew most of their energy from the war against Assad in
   order to set up a liberated area. For this reason, some other parts of
   the Syrian resistance consider them Assad’s allies. The Kurds in turn
   cite examples of discrimination against them within the opposition.

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   Barber Shop Quartet Contest - WPA
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   Barber Shop Quartet Contest - WPA
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   Salut au Monde - Federal Dance Theatre - WPA
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   Adult Education Project - WPA
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   NYC Dept. of Parks Water Carnival - WPA
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   Proclamation of the reclaiming of Alcatraz by the Indians of All
   Tribes, November 1969 (National Parks Service)
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   Entrance to Alcatraz in 2008 (Babak Fakhamzadeh / Flickr)
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   Letter from the Indians of All Tribes to the National Council on Indian
   Opportunity, January 1970 (National Parks Service)
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   Sign on Alcatraz during occupation, 1969–60 (National Parks Service)
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   Members of the People’s Guard on motorcycles, 1920. Courtesy of Eric
   Lee.
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   Armed group of the Menshevik People’s Guard, 1920. Courtesy of Eric
   Lee.
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   Eleven-year-old Liza Greenberg, daughter of David and Suzanne Nossel.
   Photo by Todd Gitlin.
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   Protest against neoliberalism in Colombia, 2013
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   with a property voucher to avoid arrest. Courtesy of HBO.
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