Country Position Paper: Statelessness in Myanmar MYANMAR’S CITIZENSHIP LAW Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship law does not comply with international standards and has been implemented in an arbitrary manner resulting in large stateless populations in Myanmar. Key resources: Arraiza and Vonk, Report on Citizenship Law: Myanmar, European University Institute, 2017, http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/48284/RSCAS_GLOBALCIT_CR_2017_14.pdf?sequence=1 Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and Norwegian Refugee Council, Navigating without a map: access to civil documents and citizenship in south east Myanmar, forthcoming 2019 (draft report available on file with Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion) Nyi Nyi Kyaw, 2017, Unpacking the Presumed Statelessness of Rohingyas, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, 15(3) pp 269-286 Myanmar’s Citizenship Law is discriminatory and is in contravention of the international law principle which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of nationality (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2016). 9 Acquisition and withdrawal of nationality is regulated in Myanmar under the 1982 Citizenship Law accessible online here: https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b4f71b.html The 1982 Citizenship Law, which was passed by the military government of General Ne Win repealed the 1948 Union Citizenship Act and the 1948 Union Citizenship Election Act (section 76). The new law severely restricted the acquisition of citizenship through criteria other than membership of a list of ethnic groups considered by the Council of the State to be pre-colonial (section 3-4). The 1982 law narrowed the criteria for automatic citizenship through connections to the country and removed provisions for naturalisation through residence or marriage. 10 It also introduced a tiered and hierarchical system of citizenship with a different set of rights and rules applying to each category. These include rules that limit the transmission of citizenship to children and the situations in which citizenship can be revoked. 11 New identity documents and documentation processes based on the 1982 Citizenship Law were first rolled out in 1989 under the new State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) military Junta as part of a citizenship scrutiny exercise. They were enforced nation-wide in the wake of political unrest in the country as well as heightened conflict and opposition to the central state in the Myanmar’s ethnic minority and border regions. A list of different identity documents is included in Annex 1. The OHCHR 2016 para 26. Article 15(2) of the UDHR provides that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality”. UN General Assembly, Resolution 50/152: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 9 Feb 1996, para 16 recognises the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality as a fundamental principle of international law. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/50/ares50-152.htm 10 For a comparison of the 1948 Citizenship framework with the 1982 Citizenship framework in Myanmar, see Institute of Statelessness and Norwegian Refugee Council, Navigating without a map: access to civil documents and citizenship in South East Myanmar, forthcoming 2019 (draft report available on file with Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion) 11 The three categories of citizenship are “citizen” (Chapter II), “associate citizen” (Chapter III) for those who had a citizenship application pending prior to the 1982 citizenship law, and “naturalised citizen” (Chapter IV). 9 5