2020
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
2(2)
accounts and avoiding detention’. 154 After welcoming the measures taken by Iraq
to reinstate the citizenship of Faili Kurds, who were stripped of their Iraqi
citizenship in the 1980s, the Committee recommended that the state party
accelerate the process of reinstating Faili Kurds’ citizenship by facilitating their
access to citizenship, including by removal of all administrative obstacles
throughout the process. 155
Lack of birth registration in particular is, as the Committee acknowledged, ‘a
contributing factor to statelessness’. 156 In the Concluding Observations of
Lebanon, the Committee recommended that the state party ensures that birth
registration is accessible to all children born in its jurisdiction, ‘including by
removing financial, procedural and regulatory obstacles’. 157 Similarly, it was
‘concerned at the requirement in the State Party for parents to present residence
registration papers before the issuance of a birth certificate for their child’, which
leads to difficulties for already disadvantaged groups. 158 On Suriname, the
Committee recommended ‘that the State Party remove administrative barriers and
discriminatory practices … to prevent statelessness and address discriminatory
practices … particularly in the context of birth registration’. 159
Refugees and Displaced Persons
Facilitated naturalisation has been identified as a possible durable solution of
statelessness in the refugee-context, where the person cannot make use of the
nationality of their home country. 160 The Committee has published a General
Recommendation specifically on refugees and displaced persons, which was
primarily focused on non-refoulement and did not go in-depth on how the various
rights under art 5 should be interpreted. 161 In its Concluding Observations, the
Committee has raised its concern over the large amount of long-term stateless
refugees on the territory of Tajikistan and Rwanda and recommended to, at the
very least, make refugees and asylum seekers aware of the law on nationality. 162
The Committee has also recommended to ‘develop a statelessness determination
154 Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Concluding Observations on the
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
Combined Tenth to Seventeenth Periodic Reports of Sri Lanka, UN Doc
CERD/C/LKA/CO/10-17 (6 October 2016) [20].
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Concluding Observations on the
Combined Twenty-Second to Twenty-Fifth Periodic Reports of Iraq, UN Doc
CERD/C/IRQ/CO/22-25 [33], [36].
Concluding Observations: Thailand, UN Doc CERD/C/THA/CO/1-3 (n 113) [14].
Concluding Observations: Lebanon, UN Doc CERD/C/LBN/CO/18-22 (n 113) [23].
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Concluding Observations on the
Combined Seventh to Ninth Periodic Reports of Azerbaijan, UN Doc CERD/C/AZE/CO/7-9
(10 June 2016) [31]–[32].
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Concluding Observations on the
Thirteenth to Fifteenth Periodic Reports of Suriname, UN Doc CERD/C/SUR/CO/13-15 (28
August 2015) 20.
Tamás Molnár, ‘A Fresh Examination of Facilitated Naturalisation as a Solution for Stateless
Persons’ in Laura van Waas and Melanie J. Khanna (eds), Solving Statelessness (Wolf Legal
Publishers, 2016) 248, 248–252.
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, General Recommendation No 22:
Article 5 of the Convention on Refugees and Displaced Persons, UN Doc A/51/18 (24 August
1996) (‘GR 22’) [2].
Concluding Observations: Tajikistan, UN Doc CERD/C/TJK/CO/6-8 (n 99) [14]; Committee
on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Concluding Observations on the Eighteenth to
Twentieth Periodic Reports of Rwanda, UN Doc CERD/C/RWA/CO/18-20 (10 June 2016)
[20]–[21].
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