To grant citizenship to a refugee as if to shelter a homeless person
Representatives of the Central Asian countries discuss taking the joint efforts directed to the issues of stateless persons.
As was revealed, the number of stateless persons in Central Asian is more than 100 thousand people. The UNICEF representatives at the regional conference said it.
As experts say, the majority of them ate former citizens of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics who until today do not get and do not confirm their citizenship to the new independent states that appeared after the collision of the USSR in 1991.
Other persons remained without citizenship because of shortcomings in national legislations on citizenship, international migration and mixed marriages.
Actually, what does it mean to be a stateless person? Experts say that the status of a stateless person means, “to be invisible,” without access to documentation, qualified medical care, educational opportunities, employment prospects and participation in the political life of society. In addition, the tragedy of this problem is that this status is often passed on to the next generation, to newborn children.
Thus, if with the adult stateless persons everything is more or less clear, then many questions with the registering all newborns.
This issue is the topical at the meeting in Almaty.
Experts assure that statelessness among children, often caused by the lack of birth registration, and other legal guarantees, is a common problem in Central Asia, which has serious consequences for thousands of children. Registration of acts of civil status, confirmed by personal documents issued during registration, provides an opportunity for everyone to prove legal personality, which is the fundamental human right for the all-encompassing development of society.
UNICEF and UNHCR experts believe that the solution of this problem within reach. A number of States have improved national legislation in the field of citizenship or have acceded to the Conventions on statelessness, thereby helping thousands of stateless persons to resolve the situation and obtain citizenship. As they stressed, it is necessary to improve the procedure of registration of a childbirth.
There is problem on which representatives of Central Asian countries along with the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the UNICEF and other structures will keep working on it certainly. However, here I would like to talk about the experience of Turkmenistan in this field. As foreign experts claim, Turkmenistan is the only country that achieved considerable success.
Turkmenistan has acceded to the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and the Protocol thereto, as well as to the UN Conventions on the Status of Stateless Persons and on Reducing Statelessness.
The laws “On migration”, “On citizenship”, “On refugees” that regulate the legal status of migrants, refugees and stateless persons and guarantee their rights and freedoms are adopted.
During 2005 and 2016, citizenship of Turkmenistan on a voluntary basis has been granted to about 20 thousand people, a large part of whom are refugees.
In the country, new samples of the certificate and travel document of a stateless person and a refugee, as well as a residence permit, have been put into effect. These documents meet the ICAO standards (International Civil Aviation Organization).
In addition, refugees who arrived in the country were provided with house accommodation and with work, as well as provided with lands in rural areas.
A stateless person is like a person without a home. Will be a happy life in a village, a city, or in a country, if there are many such people around? Probably not. I believe that to grant citizenship to a refugee is equal to giving a shelter to a homeless person. Life, for sure, will become much better.
