26 KUWAIT JUST WANTING TO BELONG 34 The drawing of boundaries early in the last century left bitter legacies. Thousands of people who were born in Kuwait and have lived there all their lives cannot claim Kuwaiti nationality. They are deprived of basic rights – to vote, enrol in a public school, or travel. And they are fated to pass on their statelessness to their children and children’s children. 28 SYRIA BLOWN AROUND AMONG THE SHIFTING SANDS Stateless people can be especially vulnerable when they are involved in an armed conflict, because they are suspected and persecuted from all sides. Refugees fleeing conflicts create yet more stateless people. But paradoxically, a conflict may also reduce the number of stateless people as governments try to appease certain groups. 30 32 36 ATLAS OF THE STATELESS UGANDA NONE OF THE ABOVE Having a proof of identity is useful for many reasons: to access services, to enable people to exercise their rights, and to prevent fraud. But even the best-designed identity systems may have gaps – through which people who do not fit the criteria may fall. And once they have fallen through the gap, it is difficult to climb back up. 38 WEST AFRICAN NOMADS MOVING WITH THE HERDS The concept of the modern state, and the rules of nationality, are based on the idea of residency within fixed boundaries. But millions of people, especially in the drier areas of Africa and Asia, move with their herds from place to place in search of water and pasture. Their lifestyle is far older than the new, artificial boundaries that cut across their traditional grazing grounds. 40 IVORY COAST FOR COFFEE AND COCOA Statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire is the result of immigration by large numbers of workers during and since the colonial era. The country’s citizenship law is restrictive and arbitrarily enforced, but the government has said it will resolve the problem of statelessness by 2024. LEBANON GENDER DISCRIMINATION DOWN THE GENERATIONS Laws in many countries discriminate against women in numerous ways: in health, education, marriage, employment, parenthood, inheritance and property rights. Citizenship is no exception: women often cannot pass on their citizenship to their children. The situation is particularly acute in Lebanon, where decisions or mistakes made by their grandparents condemn many people to statelessness today. It would be easy to solve such problems, but the country’s delicate religious and political balance prevents this. 6 The end of colonialism led to the independence of many countries and a new nationality for many of their inhabitants. But not all. Some people were left stranded: immigrants in the newly independent countries had no state that would accept them. That is the case of the Karana, a minority group in Madagascar. PALESTINIANS A LAND WITHOUT PROMISE One sequence of historical wrongs – antisemitism in Europe, culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust – led to the creation of Israel. But that gave birth to another set of wrongs: the displacement of Palestinians from their homes and their homeland. The Palestinian diaspora still has no hope of return, and many are still not accepted in the places where they live. MADAGASCAR INDIAN OCEAN, BUT NOT INDIAN 42 SOUTH AFRICA BIRTH BUT NO BIRTHRIGHT South Africa has one of the most enlightened and liberal constitutions in the world. But even here, thousands of people fall into, or are born into, the limbo of statelessness. Loopholes in laws leave gaps – gaps that large numbers of people can fall through. Children are especially at risk.