Statelessness as illustrated with the ‘stranded Biharis’ – could there be hope for all other stateless people?
Today we’d like to announce the publication of Zhi Yang’s report on his experience combining several disciplines in his experience of plastic surgery in Glasgow. Read it here.
Meanwhile, today we present the winning essay from the 2009-2010 Friends of MSF Essay Competition written by Piyush Sarmah who discusses the struggle of the Biharis as stateless people.
A stateless person in broad terms is an individual who has neither nationality nor citizenship of any country, either because their country does not exist or because the state which they claim to be part of does not accept them as its citizens
On June 11th 2010 more than a billion pairs of eyes from across the globe will shift their gaze to South Africa, where the fortunes of 32 countries competing in the FIFA World Cup ™ will be followed eagerly by many fans. And yet even today in the 21st century there are still surprisingly large numbers of people who would not have anyone to support in such a tournament because they are without a nation. These are the so-called ‘stateless people’, some 6.6 million of whom the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) identified in 58 countries worldwide in 2008. This is more than double the figure for 2007, although it has been estimated that the true figure of stateless persons around the world may actually be almost twice as large. [1] Nevertheless, ‘statelessness’ has been described by Refugees International as an ‘international blind spot’ for it is a humanitarian issue that has received relatively little attention, and progress on finding solutions has been slow.
A stateless person in broad terms is an individual who has neither nationality nor citizenship of any country, either because their country does not exist or because the state which they claim to be part of does not accept them as its citizens. According to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, they have no legal bond of nationality with any state. [2] As a result they are denied basic rights including work, education, property ownership, minimal healthcare from the state and free movement. There are some people whose statelessness is better known: the plights of the Kurds in the Middle East, the Roma in Europe and the Palestinians are known worldwide. But there are many lesser known groups who find themselves marginalised and whose situations are virtually unknown. For example, two million members of so-called ‘hill tribes’ in Thailand lack numerous legal rights despite being born in the country, [1] and two million Rohingya Muslims in Burma were stripped of their citizenship by the government in 1982 to try and force them to leave the country. [3] The issues and problems that stateless people worldwide face can be illustrated in the case of a large group of people who until very recently thought their struggle for recognition would never cease.
On August 15th 1947, India gained its independence from the British Empire but was partitioned along religious lines into modern-day India, composed of mainly Sikhs and Hindus, and the Muslim state of Pakistan with two countries, East and West, situated on either side of India. [4] The largest mass migration in human history occurred with approximately 14.5 million people crossing the borders between India and Pakistan; Hindus and Sikhs moved into India and Muslims travelled to East and West Pakistan, precipitated by communal violence that had taken hold throughout the country. [4, 5, 6] One group of people that migrated into East Pakistan from India were Urdu-speaking Muslims from the Indian state of Bihar in the northeast of the country, lured by the promise of a Muslim homeland but also fleeing from religious persecution in India. [7] At this point it is important to note that within the South Asian countries there are many different people with their own cultures, values and languages. This is why the Biharis in their new country found themselves to be a minority amongst the majority Bengali population, but they identified more with the West Pakistani elite that dominated both countries. [8]
In 1970 the Bengali population in East Pakistan declared independence from the West. In the ensuing conflict that followed, in which many atrocities were committed by both sides, the Biharis sided with West Pakistan in fighting to keep a united country. [9] However, after the entry of India into the war, and the subsequent victory and independence that followed in 1971 for the new nation of Bangladesh as it stands today, the Biharis were outcast because of their collaboration with the ‘enemy’ of Pakistan and their identification as ‘Pakistani’. Incredibly though, the very state that the Biharis had supported throughout the entire conflict, and whose very existence had brought them to migrate from India in the first place, also refused to accept them, possibly for fears of heightening cultural and ethnic tensions in an already fragile society. [10, 11] A promise was made to repatriate these individuals and bring them to Pakistan, but although approximately 100000 people ended up being repatriated, the rest of the process stalled and this promise was not realised. As a result, approximately 250000-300000 people became stateless and have existed in this manner for almost four decades. [1, 4, 12]
To this day 66 refugee camps located throughout Bangladesh (the biggest one of which is ironically named ‘Camp Geneva’) house the Biharis, who live in the squalid conditions synonymous with these places: severe overcrowding, poor sanitation, lack of water supplies, lack of an infrastructure and just abject poverty. ‘Accommodation’ for families is limited to small spaces which may measure as little as ten by eight square feet and yet within the same spaces families of up to 12 people, sometimes even more, somehow manage to sleep. [10] Sanitation is so poor that within some camps it has been reported that there is only one toilet for 3000 people. With this lack of sanitation come infectious diseases and water-borne illnesses and these are compounded by the lack of refuse collection and disposal in the camps and co-habitation with animals. These conditions become even worse in a country with a monsoon season, as rainwater gets through the inadequate roofing of many of the refugees’ homes. The vast majority of children in the camps do not receive a proper education, for example in Geneva Camp, which has an estimated population of more than 35000 inhabitants, there is one non-governmental school available to only 371 pupils. [13] These children are therefore unlikely to develop the skills and knowledge necessary for future employment, if indeed they have any chance at all of acquiring this.
Despite the scale of the crisis and the seriousness of the conditions in the camps, medical care is very limited, sometimes even non-existent. A quick search on MedLine for medical articles on the Biharis does not even yield any results for papers reporting on the medical conditions within the camps themselves in Bangladesh, only on the Bihari refugees that were eventually repatriated to Pakistan. Not only have the world’s governments failed to act for the Biharis in trying to end their statelessness, but likewise it seems that international humanitarian organisations have also failed to provide the minimum standards of the appropriate healthcare required in such disasters. [14] The UNHCR, although putting pressure on the Governments of Bangladesh and Pakistan to find a solution, has not properly addressed the plight of the Biharis, [15] and according to the terms of the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees [16] does not actually recognise them as ‘refugees’, thus depriving them of the benefits that are extended to refugee populations. [12] Another problem lies in the fact that only 65 countries are party to the 1954 Convention, not including large nations such as the USA, Canada, India, Russia or China. [17] This only adds more fuel to the argument that not only have the Biharis’ problems, to a huge extent, been ignored by the whole world, but also those of the other populations of stateless people scattered globally. [18]
Fortunately in recent times events have taken a turn for the better, raising hopes for an end to the many years of suffering of the Biharis. In May of 2008 the Bangladesh High Court in Dhaka ruled that any Urdu speaker born in Bangladesh, or whose father or grandfather were born in Bangladesh, and who had permanently resided in the country since 1971 were eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship. They also became eligible to register on the electoral roll for the country’s general elections which took place in December of that year, and after doing this to register in order to receive their national identity card and then a Bangladeshi passport. [19, 20] The sudden passing of the judgement represented a breakthrough in the Biharis’ struggle for recognition by a state, and for many of the young people living in the camps it represented the chance to escape the complete misery that they had experienced from birth. It also brought a modicum of hope to all stateless people around the world, showing that positive and possibly decisive action had been brought about after much persistence by the Biharis and those acting on behalf of their fight for recognition.
But despite the seemingly happy news there are many unanticipated matters. Firstly, the ruling of the High Court does not apply to those Biharis who were adults at the time of Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 but who were not born there, or who were born in India and crossed the border into the former East Pakistan in 1947. [21] This creates a problem for the younger generation seeking citizenship because they cannot simply abandon the elder members of their families. Moreover, some of the older Biharis do not want Bangladeshi citizenship at all and still pledge allegiance to Pakistan, clinging to the belief that the latter will eventually repatriate them to their desired homeland. [16] In addition, while the Biharis will gain many of the basic rights afforded with nationality to a specific country, there is no guarantee that the existing prejudice and hatred directed towards them from the Bengali population will cease. Their ambitions to work their way up through Bangladeshi society may be abruptly halted by the discrimination against them that still persists amongst Bengalis and which will take a long time to be eradicated. Integration into Bangladeshi society is likely to be difficult, due in part to cultural differences as is found all through the subcontinent. The refugees are also continuing to live in the camps; the younger generation, those happiest about the ruling, may take many years to work and earn enough money before they can leave, and even then finding significantly improved living conditions in one of the poorest countries on Earth will prove to be a challenge for them. The time and resources that Bangladesh can commit to ensuring successful integration of more than 150 000 people are questionable, and it is to be expected that outside aid from the UN and international donors will be required to achieve this.
All of the issues regarding the Biharis apply to stateless persons worldwide. It is important to understand the history and complex political issues which lie at the heart of all cases of statelessness, and unless these are resolved then no solution will ever be found. Unfortunately there is no international organisation specifically representing stateless people; while the UNHCR has set out plans to improve their identification, another large stumbling block in finding solutions, [22] it is likely that neither it nor other humanitarian organisations has sufficient resources and funds to bring about legal action against the countries involved to force many rulings. While the Biharis may have scored a sizeable victory, cynics can point to the extreme goodwill from the Bangladeshi government that occurred without much external pressure, something unlikely to be exhibited in other countries. For the time being, the least that the world’s governments can do is to speak out to acknowledge the presence of the problem, its scale and to recognise that swift action is needed. Pressure should be maintained on the nations concerned to bring about solutions and ensure that people like the 103 000 Hindu-speaking Nepali Bhutanese, forced to leave Bhutan in 1991 to ‘preserve its Buddhist character’ and now living in refugee camps in Nepal where they are prohibited from working, [23] can finally end their torment – brought about by political actions and events that many of them do not understand, and which have prevented them from leading normal lives with the basic rights that should be afforded to every human being, including that of nationality [24].
References:
1. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Global Trends 2008: Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2009
2. United Nations. Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. United Nations Economic and Social Council resolution 526 A (XVII), 1954
3. Garcia S, Olson C. Rohingya: Burma’s forgotten minority. Refugees International Field Report. Washington: Refugees International, 2008
4. Berkeley B. Stateless people, violent states. World Policy Journal. 2009; 26(1): 3-15
5. French P. Liberty or Death: India’s journey to independence and division. London: Flamingo, 1997
6. Collins L, Lapirerre D. Freedom at Midnight. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997
7. Sen S. Stateless refugees and the right to return: the Bihari refugees of South Asia – part 1. International Journal of Refugee Law. 1999; 11(4): 625-45
8. Rahman MDM, van Schendel W. ‘I am not a refugee’: rethinking partition migration. Modern Asian Studies. 2003; 37(3): 551-84
9. Hashmi TU. The ‘Bihari’ minorities in Bangladesh: victims of nationalisms. [Online]. Available from: http://www.statelesspeopleinbangladesh.net/uploaded_files/articles/TheBihariMinoritiesInBangladesh.pdf
10. Lynch M, Cook T. Stateless Biharis in Bangladesh: a humanitarian nightmare. Refugees International Bulletin. Washington: Refugees International, 2004
11. U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. World Refugee Survey 2000. U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, 2000
12. Farzana KF. The neglected stateless Bihari community in Bangladesh: victims of political and diplomatic onslaught. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences. 2008; 2(1): 1-19
13. Southwick K, Calabia D. Bangladesh: maintain momentum to guarantee citizenship rights. Refugees International Bulletin. Washington: Refugees International, 2008
14. Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response I. The sphere project: humanitarian charter and minimum standards in disaster response. Geneva: Sphere Project, 1998
15. Lynch M. Lives on Hold: the human cost of statelessness. Washington: Refugees International, 2005
16. United Nations. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. United Nations General Assembly resolution 429 (V), 1951
17. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. States Parties to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. [Online]. Available from: http://www.unhcr.org/3bbb0abc7.html
18. Frelick B, Lynch M. Statelessness: a forgotten human rights crisis. Forced Migration Review. 2005; 24: 65-6
19. Majumder A. Bangladesh citizenship right divides Biharis. Reuters India. [Online] May 20 2008. Available from:http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-33670220080520?sp=true
20. BBC News. Citizenship for Bihari refugees. BBC News. [Online] May 19 2008. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7407757.stm
21. Aziz S. Stranded Biharis: saga of a forgotten people continues. Saudi Gazette. [Online] December 16 2008. Available from:http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2009121657192#
22. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. UNHCR Global Appeal 2010-2011 – Addressing Statelessness. [Online]. Available from: http://www.unhcr.org/4b02c5e39.html
23. Spiegel PB, Qassim M. Forgotten refugees and other displaced populations. The Lancet. 2003; 362: 72-4
24. United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations General Assembly resolution 217 A (III), 1948