Republic of the Philippines

University of Eastern Philippines

College of Law

Research Paper on Human Rights Law
( Refugees and Stateless Persons)
Submitted by:

Carrisa Lyka G. Miranda
Raphael Dean V. Destura
Ryan Clint A. Afundar

Submitted to:
Atty. Bernabe Figueroa













Chapter I
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Introduction

To begin with, the term state is political, referring to a
community of persons more or less numerous, permanently
occupying a definite porstion of territory, having a government
of their own to which the great body of inhabitants render
obedience, and enjoying freedom from external control.
1
Having a
state is a fundamental right of a civilized man in order for him
to have a place to return to, his home.
According to the international Court of Justice, noted in
Nottebohm case
2
that according to state practice, nationality
was:
A legal bond having as its basis a social fact of
attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and
sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and
duties.
Hence, the contemporary era reveals 197 States in their
signatories in universal declaration of human rights, article 15
paragraph 1 therein says: Everyone has the rights to a
nationality. From this declaration that almost accepted by the
world, we now recognizes the value of having ones own village.

1
Hector de Leon; Textbook on the Philippine Constitution; 2008 edition (Quezon
City: Rex Printing Company Inc.) p. 6

2
ICJ Reports, 1955, pp. 4, 23; 22 ILR, pp. 349, 360.

To be able finally, the achievement of a system that everyone
dreamt of, peace and order as opposed to the brutal survival of
the fittest era, social contract, divine right, absolute
monarchy, totalitarianism. People are weary of all the endless
wars as they kept on fighting for the sake of their own
territories without a care for others which also has their own.
Taking away lives in an endless cycle as their hatred caused two
world wars but now we can see the world, though slow in pace it
began to accrue its past experiences and heading towards
stabilized peace. So every person should belong in homeland, in
a State and lived worthy as a citizen thereof. Being a Stateless
person connotes deprivation of being a human who should have his
place to return to, his domicile.
A Stateless person is not a citizen of any State.
3

Therefore, this right, citizenship is a political one and very
crucial to an individuals for their existence. It is not humane
or human for a person to become lost without any identity,
nationality, or citizenship. To this end, this right is
indispensable.
Another important human rights status is being a refugee.
To begin with, this term means a person who flees or is expelled
from a country, esp. because of persecution, and seeks haven in

3
Dictionary of Politics and Government.,3
rd
.ed.2004,p.,234
another country.
4
In Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this
status of a person may be attributed to article 14 thereof which
reads; Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other
countries asylum from persecution. The scenario to be
considered herein is a person outside the country of his
nationality, or if he has no nationality, the country of his
former habitual residence because he has or had well-founded
fear of persecution by reason of his race, religion, nationality
or political opinion and is unable or because of such fear,
unwilling to avail himself of the protection of the government
of the country of his nationality, or if he has no nationality,
to return to the country of his former habitual residence. One
of the essential elements to be considered as refugees is that
the person is treated as stateless.
To conclude, a refugee is one wherein his rights were being
violated by authorities of his own country who cannot take
refuge thereat, that is why his only remedy is to seek asylum
from another country foreign to him.




4
Blacks Law Dictionary.9
th
.ed,2009.p.1394

Statement of the Problem
This study specifically aims to correlate human rights to
the . Specifically, this seeks to answer the following
questions:
Objective of the Study
This study aims to correlate human rights to the .
Specifically, this aims to attain the following objectives:
Significance of the Study
Definition of Terms

Chapter II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDY

Chapter III
DISCUSSION


Nationality is a legal bond between a state and an
individual, and statelessness refers to the condition of an
individual who is not considered as a national by any state.
Although stateless people may sometimes also be refugees, the
two categories are distinct and both groups are of concern to
UNHCR.
Statelessness occurs for a variety of reasons including
discrimination against minority groups in nationality
legislation, failure to include all residents in the body of
citizens when a state becomes independent (state succession) and
conflicts of laws between states.
Statelessness is a massive problem that affects at least 10
million people worldwide. Statelessness also has a terrible
impact on the lives of individuals. Possession of nationality is
essential for full participation in society and a prerequisite
for the enjoyment of the full range of human rights.
While human rights are generally to be enjoyed by everyone,
selected rights such as the right to vote may be limited to
nationals. Of even greater concern is that many more rights of
stateless people are violated in practice - they are often
unable to obtain identity documents; they may be detained
because they are stateless; and they could be denied access to
education and health services or blocked from obtaining
employment.
Given the seriousness of the problem, the UN in 1954
adopted the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless
Persons.
Yet the problem can be prevented through adequate nationality
legislation and procedures as well as universal birth
registration. UNHCR has been given a mandate to work with
governments to prevent statelessness from occurring, to resolve
those cases that do occur and to protect the rights of stateless
persons. A first step is for states to ratify and implement the
1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
A refugee is a person who has fled from their own country due
to human rights abuses they have suffered there because of who
they are or what they believe in, and whose own government
cannot or will not protect them. As a result, they have been
forced to seek international protection. Refugee rights include:

protection from being forcibly returned to a country where
they would be at risk of persecution.
protection from discrimination
protection from penalties for illegal entry
the right to work, housing and education
the right to freedom of movement
the right to identity and travel documents
Who is an asylum-seeker?
An asylum-seeker is someone who has left their country in
search of international protection, but is yet to be recognized
as a refugee. According to Article 14 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights everyone has the right to seek and
to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
Amnesty International works to ensure that asylum-seekers:
are not prohibited from entering a country to seek asylum
are not returned to a country where they would be at risk
of serious human rights abuses
have access to fair and effective asylum procedures
have access to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) for
assistance, where applicable
are not unlawfully or arbitrarily detained


Amnesty International does not oppose the return of unsuccessful
asylum-seekers if they are found not to be in need of
international protection following a fair and satisfactory
asylum procedure and if their return takes place in safety and
dignity.
Who is a migrant?
Migrants move from one country to another usually to find
work, although there may be other reasons for migrating such as
to join family members. Some move voluntarily, while others are
forced to leave because of economic hardship or other problems.
People can migrate regularly, with legal permission to work
and live in a country, or irregularly, without permission from
the country they wish to live and work in.
Regardless of their status in a country, both regular and
irregular migrants have human rights, including the right to
freedom from slavery and servitude, freedom from arbitrary
detention, freedom from exploitation and forced labour, the
right to freedom of assembly, the right to education for their
children, equal access to courts and rights at work. These
rights are laid out in the Migrant Workers Convention (1990) as
well as other human rights treaties

STATELESSNESS: RESEARCH RATIONALE
In a strictly legal sense, statelessness describes people
who are not considered nationals by any state. Although
statelessness is prohibited under international law, the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) presently
estimates that there may be as many of 12 million stateless
people in the world (UNHCR 2009). The existence of stateless
populations challenges some of the central tenets of
international law and the human rights discourse that have
developed over the past sixty years. Most importantly, the
reality of statelessness is at odds with the right to
nationality which is explicitly recorded in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Article 15 of the UDHR
implicitly acknowledges the principle whereby an individuals
nationality is linked to his or her identity, and it states that
no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor
denied the right to change his nationality (UN General Assembly
1948).
The right to nationality has been further elaborated in two
key international conventions which have brought the concept of
statelessness into the United Nations framework and that will be
explored in greater detail in Chapter 2: the 1954 Convention
relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961
Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. The 1954
Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons was
initially conceived as a protocol on stateless persons that was
to be included as an addendum to the 1951 Convention relating to
the Status of Refugees but was later made into a convention in
its own right and is now the primary international instrument
that aims to regulate and improve the status of stateless
persons. A second convention was introduced in 1961 with
provisions to avoid statelessness at birth. While the 1961
Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness reiterates the main
concerns of the 1954 instrument, in practice it defers to states
and asserts that nationality shall be granted by operation of
law to a person born in the States territory to anyone who
would otherwise be stateless (UN General Assembly 1975).2 One
important failing of this convention is that it does not
prohibit the possibility of revocation of nationality under
certain circumstances nor does it address the subject of
retroactively granting citizenship to all currently stateless
persons; hence, the problem of statelessness has not been
resolved.
Few states have ratified the stateless conventions, and the
problem of disenfranchised groups and individuals being left
without nationality has multiplied.3 Some advocates have
described the plight of stateless people as a matter of human
security (UNDP 1994) since, while stateless people enjoy many
human rights under international law, in practice, those who
nationality live have great difficulty in exercising their
rights and therefore enjoy a precarious existence (Blitz 2009;
Lynch 2005).4 Research by Refugees International has highlighted
the innumerable barriers which stateless people contend with,
including the denial of opportunities to: establish a legal
residence, travel, work in the formal economy, send children to
school, access basic health services, purchase or own property,
vote, hold elected office, and enjoy the protection and security
of a country (Southwick and Lynch 2009). All too often the
births, marriages, and deaths of stateless people are not
certified and, as a result, many stateless persons lack even
basic documentation. This lack of identification means that they
are often powerless to seek redress through the courts (Goldston
2006). Significant numbers of stateless people therefore face
extortion from state and non-state agents as well as arbitrary
taxation.
Under the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of
Stateless Persons, individuals who have not received nationality
automatically or through an individual decision under the
operation of any states laws are known as de jure stateless
persons. There are also countless others who cannot call upon
their rights to nationality for their protection and are
effectively stateless or de facto stateless persons. Often de
facto stateless people are unable to obtain proof of their
national identity, residency or other means of qualifying for
citizenship and as a result may be excluded from the formal
state.
Under international law, de facto stateless persons are not
covered by the provisions of the 1954 Convention relating to the
Status of Stateless Persons even though it includes a non-
binding recommendation that calls upon states to consider
sympathetically the possibility of according de facto stateless
persons the treatment which the Convention offers to de jure
stateless people. Most governmental reporting on this issue
concentrates on de jure stateless populations although there is
a growing awareness that de facto stateless people are unable to
realise their human rights and may be equally vulnerable for
lack of effective protection from the state to which they have a
formal connection (Van Waas 2008).
Until recently, statelessness remained a minor interest
within UNHCR, despite the agencys mandate and the fact that the
global population of stateless people is counted in the
millions. However, over the past five years, influential
international NGOs and monitoring bodies have actively
campaigned to raise the profile of stateless populations and
have supported the expansion of UNHCRs efforts in this area
(UNHCR 2007). To this end, they have been supported by UN
Committees, including the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination and other UN agencies, including the Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
During Kofi Annans first term as UN Secretary-General,
there was considerable examination of the scope of the Committee
on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the exploration
of ways in which the protection of human rights could be
achieved through collaborative actions. These highlighted the
relevance of social and economic factors for development, safety
and security. One consequence of this activity was the 2003
report on the Rights of Non-Citizens drafted by the UN Special
Rapporteur on the rights of non- citizens.5 While non-citizens
and stateless people are not coterminous, the report affirmed
that non-citizensand in this instance also stateless people
enjoy universal human rights and concluded that international
law grants non-citizens virtually all rights to which citizens
are entitled, except the rights to vote, hold public office, and
exit and enter at will (Weissbrodt 2003). However, Weissbrodt
also identified a large gap between the rights that
international human rights law guarantees to non-citizens and
the realities they must face and noted that in many countries
there were institutional and endemic problems confronting non-
citizens (Weissbrodt 2003).
The report served to set an agenda for reform that was
later picked up by US-based activists and human rights
monitoring organizations working closely with UNHCR, such as the
Open Society Institutes (OSI) Justice Initiative, Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch as well as the UN
Independent Expert on Minorities. For academics and
practitioners, the issue of statelessness raises several
concerns. First, the subject has received scarce attention from
scholars or monitoring bodies, and there is relatively little
comparative research on the causes, patterns and consequences of
statelessness in the international system. Even less attention
has been paid to the value of acquiring or re-acquiring
citizenship.
Second, for development agencies, the concept of
statelessness introduces an essential power-dynamic which is
particularly challenging for the design and delivery of
effective pro- poor social development programs (Farzana 2008).
Most stateless people are the victims of discrimination by the
states in which they live; yet, these national governments
remain key interlocutors for multilateral agencies and non-
governmental bodies, which are tasked with delivering aid.
Arguably, stateless groups are not prioritized in social
assistance programs and are further disadvantaged as a result of
aid policies which do not succeed in reaching them (Blitz 2009).
Third, there is an inherent problem in the recourse to
international law as a means of reigning in human rights
violating states. It is a long recognised norm of international
law that states have the sovereign right to determine how
nationality, and hence citizenship, is acquired (League of
Nations 1930). However, in the case of stateless people, the
states prerogative of determining formal membership is often at
odds with the protection of human rights (Van Waas 2008; Weis
1979; Weissbrodt and Collins 2006; Weissbrodt 2008). Indeed, the
very notion of statelessness exposes the essential weaknesses of
our political system, which relies on the state to act as the
principal guarantor of human rights. As Hannah Arendt noted more
than fifty years ago, those who are left outside the state are
vulnerable to abuse, poverty, and marginalization in all its
forms (Arendt 2004).
In light of the problems associated with statelessness, the
right to nationality and citizenship takes on added
significance, especially when one considers how those who lack
citizenship live and what effect their disenfranchisement has on
society at large. It is an irrefutable fact that the denial and
deprivation of citizenship and the creation of statelessness
undermines the promotion of human security understood in the
broadest sense as not only violent threats to individuals but
also in the context of vulnerabilities caused by poverty, lack
of state capacity and various forms of socio-economic and
political inequity (Human Security Commission 2003; Sokoloff
2005; UN General Assembly 2008; UNDP 1994). The negative effects
of denying people their rights to nationality and citizenship
are illustrated across the globe where by disenfranchising
significant populations, states have sown the seeds for
underdevelopment and unrest as, for instance, in Bangladesh and
the Great Lakes region of Africa as well as in Palestine and
Israel and the surrounding states. Under such conditions, states
lose in terms of lower economic output and a reduced fiscal
base. The greatest losers, however, remain the individuals who
are unable to pursue their daily existence free from
interference and who have difficulties actualizing their rights,
including the rights to work, and educate their children and
access health care services.
Arguably, the granting of citizenship may undo many of the
harmful acts associated with the denial and deprivation of
citizenship as described above. Yet, surprisingly, in spite of
the significance of this area of investigation, few scholars
have sought to uncover concrete evidence of the benefits of
citizenship as a means of countering human rights violations and
social, economic and political instability. It is precisely this
gap that the proposed research seeks to address.


Chapter IV
CONCLUSION




The United Nations General Assembly convened a
Conference of Plenipotentiaries to draft an
international treaty on refugees and stateless persons
in 1951. While the Convention relating to the Status of
Refugees was adopted that year, international
negotiations on the protection needs of stateless
persons continued. The Convention relating to the
Status of Stateless Persons was adopted on 28 September
1954 and entered into force on 6 June 1960. It
establishes a framework for the international
protection of stateless persons and is the most
comprehensive codification of the rights of stateless
persons yet attempted at the international level.
The 1954 Conventions most significant contribution
to international law is its definition of a stateless
person as someone who is not considered as a national
by any State under operation of its law. For those who
qualify as stateless persons, the Convention provides
important minimum standards of treatment. It requires
that stateless persons have the same rights as citizens
with respect to freedom of religion and education of
their children. For a number of other rights, such as
the right of association, the right to employment and
to housing, it provides that stateless persons are to
enjoy, at a minimum, the same treatment as other non-
nationals.

To overcome the profound vulnerability that
affects people who are stateless and to help resolve
the practical problems they face in their everyday
lives, the Convention upholds the right to freedom of
movement for stateless persons lawfully on the
territory, and requires States to provide them with
identity papers and travel documents.
The Convention also prohibits the expulsion of
stateless persons who are lawfully on the territory of
a State Party. Because protection as a stateless person
is not a substitute for possession of a nationality,
the Convention requires that States facilitate the
assimilation and naturalization of stateless persons.
Like the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of
Refugees, the 1954 Convention explicitly excludes
individuals when there are serious reasons for
considering that they have committed a crime against
peace, a war crime, a crime against humanity, or a
serious nonpolitical crime abroad.


The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees has been mandated to assist stateless refugees
since it was established on 1January1951. Since the
1954Convention and the 1961Convention on the Reduction
of Statelessness entered into force, a series of
General Assembly Resolutions And Conclusions adopted by
the Executive Committee of the High Commissioners
Programme have given UNHCR a leadership role in
assisting non-refugee stateless persons as a distinct
population of persons of concern. UNHCR is tasked to
undertake measures to identify, prevent, and reduce
statelessness, as well as to promote the protection of
stateless persons. The 1954 Convention relating to the
Status of Stateless Persons is of critical importance
today as millions of people around the world continue
to face serious difficulties because they are
stateless. Yet too few States are parties to this
instrument.

In light of the High Commissioners call to
eradicate statelessness by 2024, UNHCR is renewing its
efforts to encourage States to accede to both
statelessness treaties. The 1954 Statelessness
Convention provides practical solutions for States to
address the particular needs of stateless persons that
guarantee their security and dignity until their
situation can be resolved. It is essential that the
provisions of this Convention be widely known and that
all stakeholders join UNHCR in promoting increased
accessions to the Convention to address the plight of
stateless persons worldwide. Information on accessions
to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of
Stateless Persons, the 1961 Convention on the Reduction
of Statelessness.
Geneva, May 2014