How are the activities connected to The Girl Who Lost Her Country? Neha’s encounters in The Girl Who Lost Her Country raise certain questions that are addressed in this theme and the relevant parts of the book: • Question 1: What is a nationality? Does everybody get the nationality of the country where they were born? (p.12, 50) • Question 5: Why do people who have a nationality sometimes lose it? (p.22, 54) • Question 8: If the government refuses to give you nationality, or takes your nationality away, what can you do to change your situation? (p.37, 58) Real-world examples encountered by Neha and included in this theme show how the (re)drawing of borders and identity politics can leave people excluded: • The Bajau Laut, a nomadic community in Malaysia where borders are drawn through their (nomadic) community. (p.30-33) • The Kurds in Syria who are “maktoum”, which means not registered in Syria. (p. 35-36) • The Makonde in Kenya who were stateless but marched to Nairobi to meet the president and demand their rights. They are now citizens! (p. 37-40) Before you begin Before you begin with any of the activities, take a look at the main issues that will come up in this theme. You can also ease the participants into the activities in the form of a warm-up discussion around the concepts set out below. Borders In this theme, we use the term borders to refer to dividing lines between different areas of territory or separating different communities. Ultimately, the borders we explore are the geographic boundaries between different countries – as you would see on a modern map of the world. These country borders have not always existed: the world’s surface has been divided up by humans through borders which have been drawn, shifted, disappeared, and reappeared over time. The borders determine what land belongs to what country. People also form a part of this system and are organised in relation to these borders and countries via citizenship (also known as nationality). A person who has citizenship is considered to “belong” to that country, to be a member of that community. This citizenship is most commonly acquired through their parents’ citizenship, by being born in the country, or by moving to the country and meeting certain requirements to prove belonging and be recognised as a citizen. However, some countries have bad rules, like not allowing women to pass on their nationality to their children or saying that people who belong to certain minorities cannot have a nationality. Other countries have good rules that are not practiced properly. For all these reasons, there are still many people in the world who don’t have a nationality. Another reason people can lose their nationality is when borders change. For example, some individuals used to be citizens of the Soviet Union, but once the country ceased to exist and its land became divided into different countries, people who had been citizens of the Soviet Union were required to get the nationality of the new country they were in. Most of them did, but some, even today, have no nationality because each new country set its own rules and some people were not included. Belonging Human beings have an emotional need to be an accepted member of a group: to “belong”. Whether it is family, friends, co-workers, a religion or something else, people have an 'inherent' desire to be a part of something greater than themselves. Our sense of belonging and identity are intertwined. The identity of a person is often influenced by where they are considered to “belong”. In the world of today, citizenship is an important form of belonging – it is the recognition of a person as a full member of the community of a country and that they can live within that 11