Lessons Learned from Modern Slavery Nations Statelessness Conventions. 7 An example of de jure statelessness includes the situation of Dominicans of foreign and Haitian descent who were stripped of their Dominican citizenship after a constitutional change. 8 In 2013, the Dominican Republic created the world’s fifth-largest stateless population when citizenship was revoked for all descendants of foreign-born parents dating back to 1929. 9 This ruling predominantly affected Dominicans of Haitian descent who had been migrating for decades from Haiti to the Dominican Republic due to natural and economic disasters in Haiti. 10 In 2018–19, the United States of America Department of State, Free the Slaves and the International Association of Women Judges collaborated with local community partners throughout the Dominican Republic to address the generations of Dominicans of Haitian descent who lack legal work authorisation in the Dominican Republic and who therefore remain highly vulnerable to exploitation and modern slavery. 11 These populations do not have Haitian Creole language abilities, nor have they ever lived outside of the Dominican Republic. Work opportunities for these populations are limited to low-wage and high-risk informal industries where they labour under constant fear of arbitrary deportation and incarceration because of this constitutional change. B De Facto Statelessness of Venezuelan Migrants and Their Children and Risk of Exploitation and Modern Slavery A broader view of statelessness can situate the plight of stateless persons within refugee crises. This is relevant in the context of de facto stateless persons where persons with a nationality, but who are not able to obtain necessary protection or benefits from that status, can also be considered effectively stateless. 12 De facto statelessness issues are pervasive in the survival migration undertaken by millions of Venezuelans following the socioeconomic and political crises beginning in 2010. These individuals cannot effectively access the protection or benefits of their nationality, thus meeting the definition of a de facto stateless person, and may be seen today in the plight of those whose birth records never existed or were destroyed, or those who are marginalised within their national community and excluded from commensurate protection by their state. 13 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, opened for signature 28 September 1954, 360 UNTS 117 (entered into force 6 June 1960); Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, opened for signature 30 August 1961, 989 UNTS 185 (entered into force 13 December 1975). ‘Haiti: Stateless People Trapped by Poverty — Victims of Dominican Republic’s Arbitrary Deportations’, Human Rights Watch (Web Page, 29 November 2016) <https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/29/haiti-stateless-people-trapped-poverty#>. Leah Libresco, ‘The Dominican Republic’s Revocation of Citizenship Creates 200,000 Stateless People’, FiveThirtyEight (online, 17 June 2015) <https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-dominican-republics-revocation-of-citizenshipcreates-200000-stateless-people/>. ibid. ‘Slavery in the Dominican Republic’, Free the Slaves (Web Page) <https://www.freetheslaves.net/where-we-work/dominican-republic/>. Clay Collins and David Weissbrodt, ‘The Human Rights of Stateless Persons’ (2006) 28(1) Human Rights Quarterly 245, 251–52. Hugh Massey, Legal and Protection Policy Research Series: UNHCR and De Facto Statelessness, UN Doc LPPR/2010/01 (April 2010) 42, 61–62; Nick Cheesman, ‘Problems with Facts about Rohingya Statelessness’ [2018] E-International Relations Articles <https://www.e-ir.info/2015/12/08/problems-with-facts-about-rohingya-statelessness/>. 143