thousands of Indigenous persons. The national census conducted during the year revealed Indigenous people were now a minority in two of the three CHT districts. The internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the CHT had limited physical security. Community leaders maintained Indigenous persons faced widespread violation of their rights by settlers, sometimes supported by security forces (see section 6, Indigenous Peoples). The number of IDPs in the CHT is in dispute. NGOs estimated the number may exceed 500,000, which included non-Indigenous as well as Indigenous persons. In 2020, the CHT Commission estimated slightly more than 90,000 Indigenous IDPs resided in the area. g. Stateless Persons Rohingya in the country were legally or in fact stateless. They cannot acquire Bangladeshi citizenship, nor does the government of Burma recognize them as citizens. Every individual born in Bangladesh is a citizen of the country by birth as per the Citizenship Act of 1951, which was originally the Pakistan Citizenship Act 1951 and amended after the country’s independence by legislative order. This provision is not afforded to Rohingya. A 2009 amendment to the act allows anyone born in the country to either a Bangladeshi mother or father the right to claim citizenship. This amendment was not retroactively applied to Rohingya children born in the country to stateless fathers prior to 2009, so these children remained stateless. There were cases in which children born to one Bangladeshi parent and one Rohingya parent were not recognized as citizens, despite the 2009 amendment. Section 3. Freedom to Participate in the Political Process The constitution provides citizens the ability to choose their government in free and fair periodic elections held by secret ballot and based on universal and equal suffrage. International observers reported recent elections were neither free nor fair because they were marred by serious irregularities. Page 29