After arriving nearly six months ago, Yasmine officially received
American citizenship today! It’s a
simple set of documents that do not change who she is essentially, but they do
certainly change who she is practically.
Yasmine can now boast membership to a nation-state and access to all the
rights and privileges of citizenship.
Acquiring this was not much more than a formality, but even formalities consist
of technicalities. Lebanon does not
allow women to transmit citizenship onto their children or spouses-apparently a
Lebanese woman is less of a human than a Lebanese man*- therefore Yasmine’s
only shot at citizenship was through me and the United States. However, this required building a case. Since I am the lone U.S. citizen parent, and
since I was not born on American soil, I had to prove that I satisfied the residency
requirements to pass nationality to my child.**
Had I not bothered to apply for citizenship nor met the nationality
requirements, Yasmine would have been at risk of having no formal citizenship,
a condition we call statelessness.
As a father, I feel a sense of relief and comfort knowing
that I have provided my daughter with citizenship. Most of us take such a thing for granted, but
for many millions of children around the world citizenship is a dream rather
than a reality. An estimated 15 million***
people in the world are stateless, deprived of a fundamental human right. In some cases they have been discriminately
denied citizenship while in other cases they have slipped through the cracks of
complicated nationality laws and find themselves lacking any. The outcome is a condition of “being a
foreigner everywhere, a citizen nowhere.”
Though most have never left their country of birth, stateless
individuals are excluded from society and deprived of the protections and
provisions of a state. They lack the right to access rights and are, as the
philosopher Hannah Arendt puts, “rightless.” An array of services, opportunities and
experiences are denied or extremely complicated for stateless individuals,
including movement and travel, land ownership, conducting business and banking,
gaining legal employment, access to education and healthcare, registering
marriages and births, voting, serving in political office, receiving a drivers
license, passing on or receiving inheritance, qualifying for insurance or
social security benefits, and participating in civic services. Just imagine for a moment how different your
life would be if you had no passport, I.D. card, drivers license, official
birth certificate or social security number?
Imagine if you had existence but no legal entity that was ready to recognize
it. Think about all the aspects of life
that would be impacted.
Before moving to Lebanon I had no concept of statelessness;
I assumed that everyone everywhere has some sort of citizenship. I knew some lack official status in their
country of residence (such as undocumented immigrants and migrants), but they
do have citizenship to a country somewhere; there is a place they can claim
official belonging. The stateless,
regrettably, do not belong anywhere. During
these past years I have encountered statelessness in many ways and many faces. It impacts children we serve at Dar El Awlad,
relatives of mine, friends and ministry partners, fellow church members and
many others. It is not a rare occurrence
or an anomaly, but rather a global crisis that extends its ugly hand to all
regions of the globe. The problem is
only intensifying as legal reforms fail to address the underlying issues of statelessness and displacement
levels reach record highs. (Refugee situations are a hornet’s nest for statelessness
to start and perpetuate.) Despite its breadth
and severity, the international community has failed to recognize statelessness
for what it is, and there remains pathetically little effort to fix this
theoretically solvable problem. Even so,
there are champions for the cause who are working to confront this injustice
with advocacy and action. I desire to be
among this number.
I may be able to rest in knowing that my daughter is now a
citizen, but I will not forget the many millions who are not so fortunate. Until every last person in this world can
boast with confidence an official nationality, I will try to be a voice and a
minister to those suffering statelessness.
This sentiment has led me make statelessness the topic of my graduate
thesis, and I believe it is only the start of my intentional engagement with
one of today’s worst human rights crises.
I am thankful for the opportunity with Kids Alive to directly serve
stateless individuals in a meaningful way, and I am thankful for friends of
mine that have recently seen their statelessness remedied. Mostly, I am thankful for our God who
promises to fully deal with every form of evil and injustice; the eternal hope
of heavenly citizenship is true and unfailing. Let it be on earth as it is in
heaven.
Please engage yourself with this important topic by
exploring the Institute on Statelessness
and Inclusion website for the most current information on statelessness and
by adding your name to the United
Nations #Ibelong campaign.
*It is
completely possible for a person who has never once stepped foot on Lebanese
soil to be granted Lebanese citizenship via the father while another born and
raised in Lebanon with a Lebanese mother is excluded nationality.
**This meant
providing proof that I resided at least five years in the U.S., three of those
years after the age of 14.
*** This
estimate is provided by the research of the Institute on Statelessness and
Inclusion, although the UNHCR puts its figure at 10 million. The number is not known precisely but the
bottom-line remains: this problem exists
at a huge scale.
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