Joint Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on
Freedom of Religion or Belief*
1. Citizens Against Hate1, Development and Justice Initiative2, Global Campaign for Equal Nationality
Rights3 and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion,4 welcome the opportunity to make this
joint submission to the Special Rapporteur on “examples of religious or belief communities at risk
of statelessness”.5 This submission focuses on the nexus between discrimination against minority
religious or belief communities, and the denial of equal nationality rights and related (risk of)
statelessness; as well as the multiple discrimination/additional vulnerabilities of religious
minorities who are stateless or whose nationality is under threat.
2. Discrimination is a primary driver in exposing minorities to statelessness, further heightening
exclusion and disadvantage, driving disenfranchisement, conflict and insecurity. Religious
discrimination is a main cause of statelessness. The intersection of sex and religious discrimination
can also lead to statelessness and other rights violations,,6 undermining equal participation in
society. Further, citizenship laws can be used as a technologies to exclude religious minorities that
are deemed undesirable, through nationality deprivation measures in the context of counterterrorism.7
3. This submission looks at religious discrimination and statelessness related to:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
the Rohingya in Myanmar and India;
Bengali Muslims in Assam, India;
sex discrimination;
nationality deprivation as a counter-terrorism measure; and
COVID-19.
Myanmar’s Rohingya: Discrimination in law and its effects
4. The Rohingya of Myanmar have faced decades of persecution and violence. Clashes in Rakhine
State in 2012 erupted into a deadly crisis. Rohingya were killed and buried in mass graves,
neighbourhoods and villages were razed, and over 125,000 Rohingya and other Muslims were
displaced to IDP camps. Violence and forced displacement continued through 2015 and 2016, as
87,000 Rohingya fled Rakhine State into Bangladesh. This violence reached its nadir in 2017,
*
For more information, please contact: Sangita.Bajulaiye@institutesi.org
http://citizensagainsthate.org/
2
https://www.daji.org.in/
3
https://equalnationalityrights.org.
4
https://www.institutesi.org/.
5
SRFoRB, Call for Submissions, Report to the United National General Assembly on Eliminating Intolerance and Discrimination
Based on Religion or Belief and the Achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 16 (ADG 16), p. 3.
6
Malaysia denies men the right to confer nationality on children born outside of legal marriage. See list of affected countries at
https://equalnationalityrights.org/the-issue/the-problem.
7
Tendayi Achiume (Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism), Racial Discrimination in the Context of Law, Policies
and Practices Concerning Citizenship, Nationality and Immigration, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/38/52 (2018).
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