Statelessness Working Paper Series 2016/04 Having understood the practical legal processes of enforcing the right to health when countries fail to uphold it, I now want to outline the effects on health care accessibility when a justiciable right to health is violated. Firstly, when a country does not seek to uphold the equal realisation of health rights between citizens and non-citizens, a lack of documentation such as a birth certificate can inhibit subsidized vaccination programmes, or may lead to higher fees that patients with citizenship do not have to cover. For instance, in 20 countries children without a birth certificate cannot be legally vaccinated.28 Another example can be found in Macedonia where the stateless Roma are explicitly excluded from Macedonian citizenship, and are consequently ineligible for state health insurance; 50% of Roma have no documentation pertaining to citizenship, health insurance or health care.29 The Roma’s lack of health insurance has been associated with high rates of premature births, chronic measles, lice infestation and a life expectancy far lower than the national average.30 Statelessness allows states to render these individuals invisible, and uses this judicial disenfranchisement as a means to deny the right to access health care on equal terms to that of full or naturalised citizens. 3. The 1982 Citizenship Law: Why was it created and how does it protect the “right to health”? 3.1 Myanmar and Human Rights: An Overview Before examining the signification of the 1982 Citizenship law, it is imperative to give an overview of the current human rights situation in Myanmar. At present there are 27 political prisoners, as well as 200 others who are incarcerated 31 ; these range from peaceful critics to land protestors 32 and journalists. In conjunction, since 2010 there have been more than 100 documented cases of rape, committed by Myanmar’s army, against women in the Kachin and Shan districts of North-Eastern Myanmar.33 In addition, in the last three years more than 120,000 Rohingya have boarded ships to flee persecution, rendering them vulnerable to extortion from human traffickers.34 On 1 May 2015 a military police taskforce found 30 mass graves at an abandoned human trafficking camp in the Songkhala province, close to the Thai-Malaysian border.35 The bodies of those were indicated to be Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh who had either starved to death or died of disease whilst awaiting ransom payments. 3.2 The Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Rakhine Conflict: The Buddhist Perspective and Historical Context The contemporary conflict between Rohingya and Buddhist’s in Rakhine State is premised upon fear; this fear is founded on three threats that the Buddhist Rakhine believe the Rohingya pose. The first being a demographic threat, namely, that the Buddhist Rakhine could soon become a minority in their own state.36 The second being the prospect of socio-cultural dilution, where Muslim Rohingya customs oppose the Buddhist way of life; for example, halal slaughter is deemed to be incompatible with the tenets of Buddhism. 37 The final and third being an economic threat, where the Rakhine feel the economic opportunities afforded by Myanmar’s financial growth are dominated by the Rohingya, who have opened small local businesses and consequently rendered the Rakhine poorly-placed to reap the 28 L Kingston, E Cohen, & C Morley, Debate: Limitations on universality: the “right to health” and the necessity of legal nationality (2010) BioMed Central International Health and Human Rights 29 B Pavlovski, Health, Health care and the Impact of the Health of the Roma in the Republic of Macedonia (2009) Skopje: ESE Report 30 European Roma Right Center (ERRC), Ambulance Not On The Way: The Disgrace of Health Care for Roma in Europe (2009) 31 Human Rights Watch (HRW), World Report 2015: Burma (2015) 32 Human Rights Watch (HRW), Burma: Land Rights Activists Are Newest Political Prisoners (2015) 33 TIME magazine, ‘Rape Is a Weapon In Burma’s Kachin State, but the Women of Kachin are Fighting Back’ (2014) 34 E Ng & T Doksone, ‘Mayalsia turns away 800 boat people; Thailand spots 3rd boat (2015) Yahoo! News Online 35 Human Rights Watch (HRW), ‘Thailand: Mass Graves of Rohingya Found in Trafficking Camp’ (2015) 36 Fortify Rights, ‘Policies of Persecution: Ending Abusive State Policies Against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (2014) 37 International Crisis Group, Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State (2014) Asia Report No. 261 4