Country Position Paper: Statelessness in Myanmar SUMMARY OF MAIN ISSUES • Since the implementation of the 1982 Citizenship Law, Myanmar has been home to one of the largest stateless populations in the world. Statelessness particularly effects individuals who are not recognised as belonging to one of the pre-colonial ethnic groups listed by the State. The largest of these groups is the Rohingya minority in Western Myanmar’s Rakhine State. • Myanmar has a very weak human rights framework generally, including for stateless and undocumented persons, resulting in numerous protection risks. Myanmar’s stateless populations and/or undocumented have, since military rule began in 2962 and continuing until today, been subject to human rights violations, persecution, crimes against humanity and mass expulsions from the country. This is not confined to the Rohingya populations who were first expelled in 1978, but also to Burmese Indians or those of Chinese descent who were expelled during the 1960s as well as, since 1988, undocumented ethnic minority populations in the conflict areas. By 2017, as a result of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing extreme violence at the hands of the military and civilians in Rakhine State, the estimated Rohingya population in Bangladesh increased to almost one million, with an additional one million estimated to be displaced elsewhere in the world. • Around one third of Myanmar’s population are considered to lack adequate state-issued documentation. Administrative barriers, delays, corruption, arbitrariness and discrimination within civil documentation and registration processes leave a large proportion of the population at risk of statelessness. Members of ethnic and religious minorities, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and people from areas that have been affected by conflict between armed groups and the central state are disproportionately affected by these problems. • Myanmar has a tiered and hierarchical system of citizenship, which is discriminatory. Those without “full citizenship” do not have equal access to rights and benefits and their citizenship status can be revoked more easily. • Myanmar has no safeguards against statelessness and the number of children born into statelessness in Myanmar is increasing over time. • Myanmar’s stateless populations living overseas face further protection issues and continue to experience inter-generational forms of social exclusion. In particular they are at risk of trafficking, indefinite detention, and refoulement. This is not confined to Rohingya populations, though nonRohingya populations tend to be less frequently identified or associated with statelessness. 3