Chapter 2 The Right to Nationality and Judgment TC/0168/13 of the Constitutional Court | 89 of Haitian descent. 205 The jurists who met with the Commission also stated that this judgment violated a number of constitutional and legal norms of the Dominican legal system. 206 200. A number of jurists observed also that for years the right to nationality has been violated countless times in practice, primarily because of the procedures routinely employed by officials at the Civil Registry and the Central Electoral Board. Judgment TC/0168/13 institutionalized and exacerbated these practices. In addition to the methods initially used to perpetrate de facto violations of the rights to nationality, legal personality, identity, and equality and non-discrimination, laws have been passed and court decisions handed down that are de jure validations of the violations of those rights. Measures that the authorities have taken at the administrative, legal, and constitutional levels and now the case law of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court have gradually sanctioned these violations. 201. These jurists also commented that the effect of these measures has been to segregate Dominicans of Haitian descent from the political and social community and, as a result, to cut them off from the protection that the Dominican State must guarantee them. As a result, they have not been allowed to enjoy and exercise a wide array of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the Dominican Republic and international human rights treaties that the State has ratified. As for the impact that the arbitrary denial of nationality and the violation of the right to legal personality have had, one jurist pointed out that “[m]any human rights violations, however serious they may be, happen only once, whereas the violations that Dominicans of Haitian descent have endured are recurring violations that perpetuate themselves and are felt daily.” 207 A woman who testified before the Commission expressed a similar sentiment: I’m from San Pedro de Macorís. Where do I begin? Well, when I was little girl I dreamed of writing a wonderful book that would be the story of my life. In the end, however, I have titled it “My terrible ordeal.” The story begins with my grandparents, who migrated from Haiti to work in the sugar cane fields. My parents were born in Haiti but their parents brought them here when they moved, which is how I ended up being born here. This story of my terrible ordeal begins when I had my first child and went to register him. I was excited and happy. Right away they followed the routine, which was that the record of live birth was handed to someone and that someone was in charge of taking it to the judge. The judge is charged with checking everything and immediately ordering that the birth be registered. What happened in my case, however, was that I was sent to the judge directly. We talked and she said to me: “Look, you 205 206 207 Remarks by Cristóbal Rodríguez during the meeting that the IACHR held with Dominican jurists concerning Constitutional Court judgment TC/0168/13. Santo Domingo, December 2, 2013. The following were among the norms that jurists believed were violated by Constitutional Court judgment TC/0168/13: articles 5, 7, 8, 18.2, 22, 23, 24, 26, 38, 39, 74(3), 74(4), 110 and 184 of the Constitution and articles 7(5) and 7(13) of the Constitutional Court’s Organic Law. Intervention by Liliana Gamboa, Coordinator of the Project against Discrimination in the Dominican Republic and Open Society’s Justice Initiative, within the framework of the meeting between the Commission and civil nd society in relation to the right to citizenship in the Dominican Republic . Santo Domingo, December 2 , 2013. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights | IACHR