South Asia State of Minorities Report 2019
issue, but also the urgent need for further research and informed,
minority-led interventions.
The South Asia State of Minorities Report 2019 is an important
and timely contribution which helps to address this gap. Through
detailed primary and secondary research, the report examines
numerous issues at the intersections of minority rights and the
right to nationality across the region. Through exploring the
contemporary dynamics of long-standing challenges—such as
those affecting ‘up-country’ Tamils from Sri Lanka both within
the country and in India, as well Bangladesh’s Urdu-speaking
minority, often referred to as ‘Biharis’—the report makes apparent
the impact of ongoing discrimination and the long shadow that
statelessness casts over minority communities, even after legal
barriers to citizenship are addressed. It also lends critical insight
into minority rights issues entangled in emerging developments
in South Asia. This includes in the state of Assam in north-eastern
India, where following the conclusion of the National Register of
Citizens process, criticised for both its discriminatory process and
approach, almost 2 million people are at risk of statelessness. The
cases addressed in the report help point to the gendered impacts of
new documentary requirements, which can be particularly severe
for minority women—an area that requires further attention.
The current report also takes a wider look at issues concerning
minorities, migration, and citizenship status in South Asia,
including the status of refugee populations such as Afghans in
Pakistan and Tibetan and Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. This
comprehensive approach helps to elucidate how refugee and
migratory trends are intimately connected to the overall problem
of statelessness in South Asia, as highlighted by the current fate
of the Rohingya who have fled from Myanmar to countries
across the region, including Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka in
recent years. It also contributes to an understanding that while
legal statuses may shift overnight, this tends to be the outcome of
longer-term political and social processes. As the report reflects,
such issues are exacerbated by the fact that countries across South
Asia have not signed onto international conventions which form
key elements of the legal and normative framework concerning the
right to nationality. None of the South Asian countries are party to
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