Kristy A. Belton 4. Current debates and trends Several discussions permeate the social and political landscapes of the Anglophone Caribbean when it comes to citizenship matters. The most prominent, especially in the wake of the Venezuelan crisis and the increased number of natural disasters, is refugees and forced displacement. Discussions around economic citizenship, gender inequality, and dual citizenship also arise in some countries. Of the at least 4 million Venezuelans who have fled Venezuela, approximately 150,000 have sought refuge in the Caribbean (R4V 2019).66 At least 24,000 and 34,000 have fled to Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana, respectively.67 As noted in Table 5 above, while two-thirds of Anglophone Caribbean countries are party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, only two have special procedures in place to provide access to citizenship for refugees and most lack asylum procedures.68 In general, governments in the area “lack the political will to address existing gaps” in asylum processing (UNHCR 2009, 309) and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) must process individuals. A combination of lack of political will, combined with increasing xenophobia and discrimination against migrants and the forcibly displaced in the region, has made it difficult for refugees to access their rights under the 1951 Convention notwithstanding Member States accession to the treaty.69 One of the quintessential features of refugeehood is that those who have fled are unable to avail themselves of the rights and protections associated with their country of citizenship. That the majority of these countries lack asylum processes and pathways to citizenship for individuals fleeing such situations highlights the risk of statelessness these individuals, who are arguably de facto stateless, face. The issue of statelessness also arises due to the mixed nature of migration in the area and the presence of irregular migrants within these populations. At the 2013 Cartagena +30 round of evaluations, the governments of the Latin American and Caribbean region issued the Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action. This Plan incorporated, for the first time, a chapter on addressing statelessness in the region. 70 Specifically, the Plan urges countries “to become party to the two statelessness conventions and to enhance birth registration processes” as well as establish statelessness status determination procedures and facilitate the stateless’ naturalization, among other measures (Belton 2017a, 21). Eight of the Anglophone Caribbean countries adopted the Plan of Action,71 “agreeing to work together to uphold the highest international and regional protection standards, implement innovative solutions for refugees and displaced persons and end the plight of stateless persons in the region” (UNHCR 2014). 66 This includes the Dutch Caribbean, the Dominican Republic, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago (R4V 2019). Data from Response for Venezuelans (R4V) and the Guyana Chronicle (2019). At least 24,000 Venezuelan refugees currently reside in Trinidad and Tobago (R4V 2020), which has a population of about 1.2 million. 68 See UNHCR (2020). 69 Discussing Trinidad and Tobago, for instance, Teff (2019) explains the difficultly that refugees, asylum seekers and irregular migrants have in regularizing their status and how the grant of refugeehood only provides very limited access to rights. 70 See Belton (2017a) for more information on the Cartagena process, especially as it relates to statelessness in the region. 71 The eight Anglophone Caribbean countries were Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. 67 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-Comp. 2020/3 - © 2020 Authors 27