Prophetic Law Review Volume 5, Issue 1, June 2023
one’s state of nationality, but crucially also these rights of entry, resident, and
diplomatic protection.13
Therefore, the right to citizenship is the key right of all human rights. This is
based on Hannah Arend's theory about everyone has a “right to have rights,” in
which the right to citizenship is the link between human rights and the state.14 This is
based on the fact that without attachment to a particular political community (state),
there is no guarantee of someone’s rights, even for someone who was previously
said to have rights attached to him. This is the reason stateless children are avoided
because they will lose the capacity to enjoy essential rights in their life. On the other
side, depriving a person of the status of a member of a community constitutes a
crime against humanity.15 Consequences of Statelessness cause children to find it
difficult to get their rights such as:
a. Right to an education: In the field of education in Indonesia, the Government has
adopted a compulsory education policy, wherein every citizen aged six years and
above, can attend basic education free of charge. 16 This would be difficult to
obtain if there is no intervention from the Indonesian government because
stateless children do not have official identities in the form of residence
documents or birth certificates as Indonesian citizens.
b. Access to Healthcare: Without citizenship status, stateless persons will have
difficulty getting social program guarantees and access to health provided by the
government for their citizens. Access to health is one of the most important
things, especially for children under five who are susceptible to disease and need
immediate help if they get sick. On the other hand, in the case of the COVID-19
pandemic, some foreign refugees in Indonesia had difficulty accessing vaccines
and felt that their fates were increasingly unclear in the midst of the Covid-19
pandemic. Some of them questioned the guarantee of healthcare pr in the midst of
the outbreak, including vaccinations. Meanwhile, the risk of their exposure is the
same as that of other residents and if ignored, it has the potential to be dangerous.
For example, a refugee told journalist JN Joniad reporting for BBC News
13
David Owen, 'On the Right to Have Nationality Rights: Statelessness, Citizenship and Human
Rights,” 65 (3) Netherlands International Law Review (2018), 303.
14
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Schocken Books 2004), 291.
15
Hannah Arendt (n 14), 376.
16
Law No. 20 of 2003 on the National Education System, Art 34 (2).
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