2021
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
3(1)
no safe repatriation option. They call for more permanent solutions to their status
as part of a solution to alleviate the vulnerable conditions they are living in. 16
Beyond documenting the challenges each stateless and undocumented
community is experiencing, each piece also provides some hope that the pandemic
offers a moment of change. For example, Anne Baltazar and Amanda Cheong
discuss how ANAK, a grassroots organization founded by Baltazar, has developed
innovative and targeted strategies to ensure that stateless communities are getting
the public health information and resources they need to cope. 17 They advocate
for an approach that involves stateless persons and listening to and learning from
communities in order to generate future advocacy strategies and services. Further,
Yvonne Su, Tyler Valiquette and Yuriko Cowper-Smith argue that poor public
policy responses have dire consequences and that beyond better local responses,
enhanced coordination between government, international and local organisations
is needed. 18
While this issue’s Critique and Commentary part is meant to be a warning about
what is happening when we ignore stateless and undocumented communities, our
authors provide recommendations and hope that as we move towards recovering
from the pandemic, we can do so including stateless and undocumented persons,
and listening to them about the best ways to do so.
I want to give special thanks to the authors of this part. Writing such thoughtful
pieces during the pandemic is no easy feat and they provided insightful and
important contributions. As an editor, it was a joy to work with this group of
advocates and scholars.
16
17
18
Cowper-Smith and Muhammad (n 1) 154.
Baltazar and Cheong (n 5) 133–37.
Su, Valiquette and Cowper-Smith (n 2) 161–62.
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