Stateless and crying for help from the beloved country (Staatloosheid)
News Stories, 27 November 2014
© UNHCR/H.Caux
DUÉKOUÉ, Côte
d'Ivoire, UNHCR – When asked about his past, Ousmane* hesitates, clearly
reluctant to talk about it. He has suffered a great deal in his life,
and it pains him to recount bad memories.
Once
he realises that his UNHCR visitors are friends, he begins to open up
and tell his harrowing tale of life without a nationality. His
recollections of childhood are hazy – he knows only that he was born in a
small village in south-east Côte d'Ivoire, across the border from
Ghana, that his mother was a citizen of Burkina Faso, or Burkinabé, and
that his father disappeared when he was young.
But
when asked what nationality he has, Ousmane cannot answer. Like many
other children born in rural areas of Côte d'Ivoire, the 33-year-old was
not registered at birth. He was born out of wedlock, but his mother
died shortly after his birth and Ousmane's father was never identified.
He was raised in the Burkinabé community.
To
make matters worse, he cannot produce any documents that confirm his
parents' identity or prove his own nationality. Neither the Ivorian nor
the Burkina Faso authorities recognise him as a national of their
country. Like more than 10 million other people in the world, he is
stateless.
But rather than accepting
his legal limbo, Ousmane is trying to do something about it. And he has
the support of UNHCR, which is lobbying the authorities to resolve his
status, either through the recognition of Burkinabé citizenship or as a
stateless person in Côte d'Ivoire entitled to rights, including the
right to an ID.
UNHCR earlier this
month launched a campaign to end statelessness by 2024, urging
governments to change their laws and recognise stateless people. Without
legal recognition, many stateless people lack access to basic rights,
including travel, education and employment.
The
government of Côte d'Ivoire in April launched a special programme to
enable certain groups who have been living on Ivorian soil for
generations to acquire nationality by declaration. This new temporary
procedure is intended to resolve the problem of historical migrants who
were legally entitled to acquire Ivorian nationality, but failed to do
so in time.
Ousmane discovered how
difficult life without a nationality could be, when he tried to escape a
life of exploitation. In 1987, aged just six years, he was taken from
his village by a woman who claimed to be an aunt and sold him to a
landowner in Gbapleu, about 400 miles north-west of the Côte d'Ivoire
capital Abidjan.
Over the next eight
years, he was forced to work in the cocoa plantations of an abusive
landowner. He had to clear brush, plant and pick cocoa beans and plough
fields, and was severely beaten if he complained or was too slow. "They
would hit me across the face, across the chest, over and over again," he
says.
Being stateless made him more
vulnerable; without legal status it was difficult for him to make a
formal complaint. But one day, when he was about 14, Ousmane escaped and
made his way to his birth village in search of relatives. Since he had
no documents, he did what many stateless people desperate for some kind
of legal identity do.
He obtained the
consular card of a young Burkinabé man who had recently died and used it
to cross the country and get past checkpoints. The card is issued by
the Burkina Faso authorities to Burkinabés living in Côte d'Ivoire to
confirm their citizenship. There was no sign of his elusive father, so
Ousmane had little choice but to return to Gbapleu, where he at least
knew people.
He realised more and more
over the ensuing years that his lack of documentation was a serious
problem – if he was caught using someone else's identity card, he could
face criminal charges. So he eventually decided to apply for a consular
card from the Burkinabé mission in Duékoué, one of the main towns in
western Côte d'Ivoire.
With this
document, he would be able to prove that he was recognised by the
authorities as a Burkinabé citizen and receive assistance from the
Burkina Faso authorities. But, with no documents to confirm his identity
other than a stolen ID card, his application was immediately rejected.
To
avoid further abuse and stigma, he contacted staff at a local social
services centre and they put him in touch with UNHCR. At the time, he
was planning to leave Gbapleu the next day, in search of assistance but
mostly to escape further forced labour or beatings. He hopes that, with
UNHCR support, his case will be successful, but he remains stateless and
will continue to live on the margins of society, vulnerable, poor and
easy to ignore.
* Name changed for protection reasons.
By Nora Sturm in Duékoué, Côte d'Ivoire
Origineel hier: http://www.unhcr.org.uk/news-and-views/news-list/news-detail/article/stateless-and-crying-for-help-from-the-beloved-country.html
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