In one of the world’s most contentious cities, there are two conflicting claims to sovereignty over holy places and residential neighborhoods. East and West Jerusalem are divided along ethnic and religious lines — in addition to the separation fence that Israel built to secure the city.

Palestinians claim the eastern sections of the city as the capital of a future Palestinian state. While successive Israeli prime ministers have announced support for a two-state solution, there is ambivalence about how and when to alter the city’s political fabric.

Martin Savidge hosts Mustafa Barghouti and Gershon Baskin on this week’s Worldfocus Radio show “Jerusalem United or Divided?”

The radio show builds upon three Worldfocus signature videos about Israel — on hi-tech, divorce and settlements — and will focus on the following areas:

• Geography of Jerusalem: East and West, Old City, Temple Mount and security barrier
• Demographic Shift: secular flight, “Judaization,” and “united” capital city
• Shared Capital: unilateral statehood, joint sovereignty and Palestinian government

Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Ben Piven

GUESTS:

Mustafa Barghouti is the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative (al-Mubadara), also known as the “third way.” A Ramallah resident, he serves in the Palestinian parliament (PLC) and was the Minister of Information in the short-lived Palestinian unity government. He came in second (with 19%) to Mahmoud Abbas in the 2005 presidential elections. He also appeared on the Daily Show last month.

Gershon Baskin is co-chairman of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, a Jerusalem-based organization committed to the two-state solution. He specializes in the future of Jerusalem, strategic cooperation and water issues. He was also on Israeli PM Ehud Barak’s team of Jerusalem experts following the Camp David talks.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Ben Piven and Lisa Biagiotti
Researcher: Mohammad al Kassim

Somali Pirates

Connie Kargbo is an associate producer at Worldfocus and a native of Sierra Leone. She writes here of the story behind Somali piracy.

There is news today that Somali pirates have hijacked a Chinese fishing vessel in the waters off the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean — a move that seems to be expanding their reach to the east.

Last week, Somali pirates who had hijacked a Spanish fishing vessel with 36 crew members on board in early October demanded a ransom of $4 million in exchange for the release of the hostages.

The ransom demand is average — pirates these days usually request between $2 and $6 million for the release of ships and hostages. The difference is that the pirates are calling the $4 million a payment for illegally fishing off the coast of Somalia.  It may come as a surprise to some but this little-known dispute about Somalia’s fishing industry is at the root of the ongoing pirate situation today.

When Somalia’s central government was overthrown in 1991 the country quickly deteriorated into what many are now calling a failed state.  With the lack of central leadership and ongoing clan warfare, law enforcement took a backseat to the violence.

This lawlessness spread to the coast of Somalia with the arrival of  illegal foreign fishing vessels.  Many of these vessels did not have the proper rights to fish in these waters, but the lack of regulation made it easy for them to fish to their hearts content. Some of these ships were owned by countries now patrolling the coast of Somalia, the country’s police chief said Wednesday.

This illegal industry in turn began to hurt local Somali fishermen who were dependent on the fish they caught. Competition from foreign fishermen depleted fish resources and also brought toxic waste to Somali waters.

Fearing for their livelihoods, local fisherman began patrolling off the coast of Somalia and fining ships that were found to be illegally fishing in the area. Just as some illegal foreign fishing vessels found an untapped and lucrative zone to make money, in time the Somalis who patrolled the coast exploited their newly found money-making opportunity.

What began as a way for Somalis to protect their livelihood eventually became the livelihood.  Reprimands and small fines for ships found illegally fishing became hijackings and million dollar ransoms on any ship that was caught, regardless of whether or not the ships actions were illegal.  And so pirates were born off the coast of Somalia.

Nowadays most Somali pirates are not former fisherman but stealth businessmen looking to make a buck. And while illegal fishing vessels have largely been replaced by foreign navies patrolling the coast on the lookout for pirates, within Somalia the problems of rampant violence and insecurity still persist.  Until there is an overhaul of the country’s fundamental problems, crime along the coast of Somalia will largely be a reflection of the country’s internal conflict.

- Connie Kargbo

These men, women and children are scattered across six continents and excluded from virtually all the benefits of nationality. From Rohingyas in Myanmar to Nubians in Kenya and Bidoon in Kuwait, stateless people live without the protection or recognition of a government.

The UNHCR and countless United Nations proclamations have tried to address this lingering problem.

Worldfocus’ project “Stateless to Statehood” examines the root causes of statelessness in the post-colonial period.

Click on the highlighted countries for more information, much of which was provided by Forced Migration Review and Refugees International.

There are estimates of 16 million total refugees and asylum seekers living throughout the world. Refugees fall under the responsibility of different global agencies. There are 10.5 million refugees under the auspices of UNHCR, while UNRWA has responsibility for the estimated 4.7 million Palestinian refugees.

Image courtesy of UNHCR.

Four-fifths of all refugees come from the developed world and almost half of all refugees under UNHCR’s responsibility are from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to UNHCR, one out of every four refugees in the world is from Afghanistan.

It is estimated that half of the world’s refugees are living in urban areas, while one-third live in refugee camps, according to the UNHCR. Africa and Asia contribute the most the numbers of refugees, as shown in the graphic above.

See UNHCR’s full 2009 Global Trends report for more information.

Pakistan is host to the largest number of refugees worldwide (1.8 million), followed by the Syria (1.1 million) and Iran (980,000).

There were 16 countries that reported allowing the resettlement of some 88,000 refugees in 2008, according to government reports. The United States accepted the highest number of refugees (60,200). In addition, 604,000 refugees voluntarily returned to their home countries in 2008.

Image courtesy of UNHCR.

According to UNHCR there were 827,000 asylum seekers in 2008.

Image courtesy of UNHCR.

Throughout the world, there are an estimated 26 million internally displaced persons. IDPs generally flee their homes for the same reasons as refugees (armed conflict, human rights violations and war), but they remain within their native country and are technically protected by the law of that country.

For an excellent, detailed explanation of global human displacement, look at the Guardian’s map.

A mostly Bidoon slum outside Kuwait City.

Bidoon literally means “without” in Arabic and refers to a group of Bedouin, formerly nomadic Arabs, who are perceived as socially and culturally inferior to the dominant “merchant” tribes of the Gulf States. Around 100,000 Bidoons reside in Kuwait, and many also live in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

As competition for unskilled jobs has increased over the past few decades, the Kuwaiti government began a campaign to strip Bidoons of their rights. Many worked on oil rigs but have since lost many of their jobs to South Asian migrant workers.

Most are legally unable to attain jobs, own property or register a car.

As opposed to some other countries such as Bangladesh (where statelessness is also a problem), in Kuwait there are very limited legal means to change nationality and registration. The state simply does not entertain complaints about legal status.

Ashraf (whose real name we don’t use) is a Kuwaiti Bidoon who was born in Kuwait, just like his father and grandfather. Yet, he has neither marriage contract, access to formal employment, nor birth certificate for his child.

He resides in a slum in al-Jahra, 35 kilometers outside of Kuwait City. Historically, there was a wall around the main urban area of Kuwait City to keep out lower status social groups.

Ashraf talks with Worldfocus about how he traveled to the U.K. to seek better employment opportunities but was subsequently deported.

Worldfocus: How does statelessness affect you?

Ashraf: I don’t have any rights in Kuwait. First, I don’t have a job. If I want to look for a new job, employers say, “No, you can’t work because your ID card is just for six months.” I must go renew it every six months.

I don’t have a marriage certificate. My son hasn’t a birth certificate, ID card or any other proof of his existence. Also, medicine for Bidoons is not free. How can I get money for it when we are not allowed jobs?

Worldfocus: How has your situation gotten worse over the past decade — in terms of employment and housing?

Ashraf: I am now almost 28-years-old, and I feel miserable. I worked in co-operative society, and they did not give me my salary for three months. After one year, they fired me from the job and did not give me my final paycheck.

My salary was 150 Kuwaiti dinars ($524), and my flat rent is 100 dinars ($349). This means just 50 dinars ($175) for my wife, son and myself for many months.

I can’t make any legal case because the employer has Kuwaiti nationality, and I am stateless.

Worldfocus: Do you fault the Kuwaiti government agencies for your statelessness problem?

Ashraf: The government agencies are the first reason for the problem of stateless people. And the second reason is some of the members of the Kuwaiti parliament. Third, some Muslim clergy are at fault.

At the Executive Committee of the Illegal Residents, they wanted to put me down for Iraqi nationality on my marriage certificate. I took it up with the research and investigation office. Then I asked why they had put down Iraqi nationality. And I requested that they give me proof — because I wanted to go to the Iraqi embassy to get an Iraqi passport.

The clerk there said that it was up to me if I wanted to take it. Then I said to him that I wanted Israeli nationality because they’re better than Kuwait, and they grant all rights to Israeli people. He then told me to get out of there.

Worldfocus: What are you currently doing to resolve your statelessness situation? Have you sought the help of NGOs, media, or friends?

Ashraf: It is very hard to resolve this problem from Kuwait. Maybe it’s easier from America, the U.K., France or another foreign country to solve the stateless problem. I was in the U.K. to claim asylum, but they refused me because they said, “You have all your rights in Kuwait.” I asked them, “If I have all my rights, then why did I come to the U.K.?”

As for the Kuwaiti media, they’re just lies for us. And Kuwaiti NGOs - I’ve never tried working with them.

I want people to stand with us opposite the Kuwaiti Embassy in the U.K. to stop the injustice. Let’s solve this problem which has lasted for more than forty years.

Worldfocus: You’re from Gaza, but you weren’t born there?

Gaza City in 2007, the year that Hamas ascended to power.

Nizar al-Wazir: My family has lived in Gaza City for generations, but I was born in Dubai 27 years ago. My parents were unable to return to Gaza after leaving the coastal strip to study abroad in the late 1970s. After the UAE, we lived in Jordan for three years — until the Oslo Accords allowed us to return to Gaza in 1994.

I did high school in Gaza before attending Birzeit University from 1999 to 2003. But I couldn’t visit my parents 60 miles away in Gaza, due to the 2nd Intifada.

Worldfocus: Is your family involved in politics?

Nizar al-Wazir: My uncle, Khalil “Abu Jihad” al-Wazir, was a co-founder of Fatah. He was Yasser Arafat’s right hand man and the commander of Fatah’s al-Assifa military wing. He was exiled from Israel to Gaza in 1948, and then from Jordan to Lebanon to Tunisia. He was assassinated there by Israel in 1988 — at the beginning of the first Intifada.

My family has always been Fatah, but my parents stay out of politics. They still live in Gaza City, where my father is a consultant for the Fatah-controlled Ministry of Finance. My mother is a deputy assistant at the Ministry of Education.

Worldfocus: When do you think Palestine will achieve statehood?

Nizar al-Wazir: We were optimistic after Oslo, when I attended the Seeds of Peace Camp in the U.S. After the beginning of the second Intifada, F-16 bombardments were regular. Electric generators were knocked out, so we had power for five or six hours each day.

After Shalit was captured, we had sonic booms over Gaza five times per day — for over a month.

Anyway, I don’t see the Palestinian state coming any time soon. The West Bank is too divided into small cantons, and Gazans are too extreme.

Worldfocus: In 2008, the U.S. State Department cancelled seven Fulbright grants because the recipients could not get visas. After a diplomatic outcry, the grants were reinstated two days later. Could you explain the political issues at stake?

Nizar al-Wazir: With a Palestinian Authority passport, one can travel everywhere. But getting a visa is the difficult part. Israel has imposed strict movement restrictions since Hamas took over Gaza. I can’t even have friends from other countries visit me in Gaza.

The Department of State even sends different forms to Fulbrighters in Gaza and the West Bank. We are not viewed as being from the same Palestinian entity.

I was nominated for a Fulbright scholarship for the first time in 2005. But I couldn’t get a placement at an American university because I couldn’t travel to either Egypt or Jordan for the GMAT.

Of the seven Fulbrighters chosen from Gaza in 2007, only three made it to the U.S. — mostly via personal connections. But there was no media attention that year.

In 2008, seven Gazan Fulbrighters were very close to losing their scholarships, until the media alerted Condoleezza Rice and the international community.

Worldfocus: After your work in Washington D.C. is finished, will re-entry to Gaza be difficult ?

I plan on returning to Gaza at the end of this summer. Some of my friends think I should go back to the West Bank and not Gaza. But since I’m in the U.S. on a State Department grant, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem might organize a group re-entry for a group of us to re-enter Gaza.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user OneArmedMan under a Creative Commons license.

Language has become a symbol of independence in Greenland.

In recent months, Greenland has taken steps towards self-rule. The changes follow a referendum last November, in which 75 percent of the electorate voted to take more control of their own land.

Cultural identity is also highly important to Greenlanders, and Kalaallisut — or Greenlandic — is now the official language.

Jason George of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting writes that the language has become a symbol for national pride.

When Denmark gave up control of Greenland last month—ending 300+ years of colonial control—one of the first changes Greenland made was to declare Greenlandic the country’s lone national tongue.

For Greenlanders it was a point of pride to drop Danish off the list, but people here also wanted to symbolically declare that Greenlandic is central to the country’s future. They see nothing nostalgic or quaint about Kalaallisut, the most widely-spoken dialect, even if only about 55,000 people speak it.

At a popular internet café in the capital, local teenagers spend summer evenings playing computer games, chatting online in English with other gamers around the world. All Greenlandic students learn English in school and many are as comfortable with the language (and its locker room humor) as any American teen.

However amongst themselves these teens talk almost exclusively in Greenlandic, and there’s no evident pressure to ‘look cool’ by speaking English. In fact one 15-year-old gamer, Rasmus Nielsen, told us that when he moved here from Denmark 10 years ago the kids teased him about not being able to speak Greenlandic.

He learned quickly.

Of course learning a new language is easiest for kids. Professor Lenore Grenoble struggled to gain some grasp of Greenlandic before arriving here on Monday. Even with several tutoring sessions from her University of Chicago colleague Jerrold Sadock, Grenoble made little headway. “I’ve learned three phrases,” said Grenoble, who’s researching Greenland’s success at maintaining its language, despite strong outside pressures.

“It’s a very difficult language,” added Grenoble, who speaks several other languages herself, including one spoken only in the Siberian arctic.

Why’s Greenlandic so difficult?

Beyond its 10 cases, eight moods and four-person forms, Greenlandic is polysynthetic, meaning words are often made up of roots, affixes and suffixes. This quirk makes many words terribly long. In fact, some can be entire sentences, such as amaasiaarput (“They walk in a row”) and taamaaqatigiipput (“They are considered as equals.”)

Grenoble will travel today to Sisimiut, above the Arctic Circle, to begin the bulk of her work and meet with Carl Olsen, chairman of the Oqaasileriffik, the Greenland Language Secretariat. The Oqaasileriffik oversees how Greenlandic adopts new words, like qarasaasiaq for “computer” (literally “artificial brain”), and how it hopes to survive.

For the Secretariat and Greenlanders, maintaining their language is not just an issue of communication, but security and sovereignty.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user stml under a Creative Commons license.

Greenlanders at a political rally in Copenhagen. Photo: Ben Piven

Multimedia reporter Ben Piven traveled to Denmark in 2005, where he photographed Greenlanders in the capital. That year, when record-high winter temperatures in Greenland exceeded 60 degrees Fahrenheit, Greenlandic political groups continued to lobby for their own state.

I read two weeks ago how midsummer’s day was the occasion for big celebrations in Greenland’s capital of Nuuk, a small town snuggled between fjords on the southwestern coast. Clad in sealskin boots and waving red and white Greenlandic flags, a procession of indigenous Inuit people reveled in their newfound autonomy. Greenland had just become an “equal partner” with Denmark, the former colonial power. And the Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen even proclaimed that Greenland could declare full independence whenever it wanted!

Greenland is a massive expanse towards the north pole that should have been called Iceland or Whiteland, since 81 percent of the world’s 840,000 sq.-mile island is covered with a giant, uninhabitable ice sheet. But Greenlanders will be sticking with the Inuit name, Kalaallit Nunaat, now that the landmass of fewer than 60,000 people is moving farther away from Denmark.

Irrespective of the political situation, glaciologists and environmentalists are very worried about Greenland’s main glacier, Sermersuaq. Containing about 10 percent of the world’s fresh water, it is melting at an alarming rate — having receded ten miles over the last decade. But scientists disagree on both the pace and the consequences of the melting, even as Manhattan-sized chunks break off from the island.

The population mostly lives along the south-eastern coast. Map: Creative Commons

Yet, some Greenlanders stand to benefit from climate change. In a BBC article from July 25, Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist was quoted as saying, “We understand that this is a global issue…but we see opportunities as well as challenges. I want a Greenland that is open to those opportunities.”

In the future, thawing glacial streams may provide ample amounts of hydropower. Yet, rising ocean levels and melting permafrost are flooding areas of settlement. At the same time, thawing glaciers have not been detrimental for many farmers.

More vegetables could supplement the traditionally fatty Greenlandic diet, which is rich in musk ox, reindeer, and scallops. At the same time, traditional dog-sledding is more difficult for hunters as the ice sheet disappears, and shrimpers lose out when the shrimp stocks move farther north in search of colder waters. The largest sector of the economy is the fishing industry — shrimp, seals and whales. These days, scientists are hoping to extract biogas from the Greenland shark, whose meat is actually toxic to humans.

Others are happy about the prospects of global warming facilitating a Greenlandic gold rush. The state-owned oil and mining firms, NUNAOIL and Nunaminerals, are hoping to cash in on potentially enormous underground deposits, which are now more accessible due to rising temperatures. So global warming is a mixed bag, promising greater economic independence as well as environmental hazards.

While politically a part of Europe since the 18th century, the increasingly autonomous Greenland is also reasserting its indigenous Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) language and culture. Similar Eskimo/Inuit communities of northern Canada and Alaska are also increasingly seeking more rights.

The flag of Greenland.

Just last month, Greenlanders elected Kuupik Kleist as prime minister. The head of the leftist Inuit Ataqatigiit (Community of the People) party wants full autonomy from Denmark. In the meantime, the Danish queen, Margrethe II, enjoys largely ceremonial authority over the island.

Since 1979, Greenland has enjoyed home rule. In 2008, Denmark transferred more responsibilities to the local government but maintained control over foreign policy, security, and finance. Recently, however, Danish media have lamented the possibility of being dragged into an Arctic arms race, as Canada, the U.S. and Russia also vie for resources.

Aside from global warming, the biggest problem for Greenland is how to wean itself off Danish support. Total annual grants are $633 million ($11,300 per Greenlander), which amounts to about half of Greenland’s GDP per capita. Greenland’s young government is hoping that nascent industries such as mining, energy and tourism will make up for the difference.

Socially, Greenland is plagued by high rates of domestic abuse, alcoholism, and suicide — especially for the 88 percent of the population who are Inuits or mixed Danish-Inuit. A small number of Greenlanders live in Denmark proper, and many of them are also plagued by alcoholism and dependence on the generous Danish welfare state.

In sum, ice-fishing and dog-sled races could start attracting more visitors in a tourist season conveniently extended by global warming. Bright red Air Greenland jets could be flying soon to an airport near you.

- Ben Piven

Conflict in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast has claimed 40,000 lives.

Selma Şevkli is a freelance reporter currently based in Bodrum, Turkey. She describes how the country has struggled to define its “Türküm,” which translates as Turkishness.

In 2005, Turkish lawmakers made it a crime to insult Turkey or Turkishness. Until last year, criticizing Turkishness was even punishable with up to three years in prison. Even as Turkey moves forward in the process of acceding to the European Union, it has moved further into its nationalistic bubble.

Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code — criminalizing insults against “Turkish identity” – was used famously to incriminate writer Orhan Pamuk for accusing the Turkish government of complicity in murdering 30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians. The law has since been used to indict publishers, journalists and novelists. Our freedom of speech is hampred by our undying nationalistic political culture.

Turkish flags at a 2006 demonstration in Istanbul.

What is Turkishness? Is it a sort of nationality? A form of ethnicity? Or the name of one specific citizenship? As almost one-third of Turkey’s population consists of Kurds who are legally referred to as Turkish, the question has become increasingly significant.

As I was researching secular Turkish nationalism for my graduate thesis, my first question to the people I interviewed was “What is Turkishness?” The answers varied widely, but for many people, it was a race or ethnicity. My second question asked whether Turkishness should include other ethnic groups in Turkey — Kurds, Armenians, Greeks and many other smaller groups. After all, who qualifies as a Turk?

Turkish nationalism has been integral to the official discourse in Turkey since the beginning of the Turkish Republic in 1923. But for most of Turkey’s history, we have largely pretended that all our citizens are ethnically Turkish. The various ethnic and religious minorities have generally been ignored, forced to emigrate or assimilate. The issue of Turkish nationalism only became visible when the Turkish state was compelled to assess its ignorance and change its policies toward minorities — in soliciting an invitation to join the EU.

For many years, there was a total ban on Kurdish language and culture, as well as political pressure and economic restrictions in the Kurdish-populated region of the country. But things are changing now. Turkish state TV established a channel that broadcasts in Kurdish, which is a major departure from the language ban. Significant violence is ongoing, though less intense than ten years ago. It seems that policies dealing with cultural rights are making a difference.

Kurds are finally moving one step forward in Turkey, even though it is largely symbolic. Other minorities are not mentioned as much as the Kurds in the media, since their numbers are not as significant and they do not assert their rights as aggressively.

The Turkish state is suffering from its enduring ignorance towards other ethnic groups and an inability to adapt itself to the contemporary world. Although political reforms and new cultural policies seem to indicate a gradual shift, there needs to be a sea change in order to implement reforms more effectively and sincerely. For one thing, minorities should be mentioned in history class as essential parts of Turkey — instead of cited as national enemies. Patient and devoted, Turkey’s minorities have chosen to be a part of this country, and so it is time to recognize their rightful place in our society.

- Selma Şevkli

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Nairobi’s largest slum, Kibera, is largely populated by Nubians. Photo: Flickr user MothersFightingForOthers

Nubians in Kenya are one of the groups that Worldfocus is exploring on our extended coverage project Stateless to Statehood.

Adam Hussein Adam, project coordinator of the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, writes how his community’s plight is largely unknown outside of Kenya.

Kenyan Nubians have been defined as stateless people because their identity is questioned. They are without doubt one of the country’s most invisible and under-represented communities – economically, socially, politically and culturally. This is because they have been silent victims of discrimination, exclusion and violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms for as long as they have been in Kenya…

My great-grandfather worked in the service of the British in Somalia around the First World War and later resettled in Meru, a small town on the slopes of Mt. Kenya. His father before him worked for the Turko-Egyptian army in the Sudan. I, like my parents, was born in western Kenya.

Although I am well-educated, I have experienced serious difficulties in interacting with government officials. Between 1992 and 2000, I applied unsuccessfully for a passport five times, losing jobs in the process. One manager once asked me why I did not have a recognisable ethnic identity and that this was why I could not be promoted. Apart from studying to university level, which is an exception rather than the rule, mine may as well be the story of most Nubians. It is a story characterized by the need to survive through challenges that are never explained to you. It is a story characterised by limited interactions with state officials who always remind you it is your privilege to be served by them. It is a story characterised by assuming false identities in order to belong…

Before I encountered these challenges in my own life and found out that many of my Nubian colleagues gave up hope of productive careers because of delayed or denied identity cards, I had accused most of them of being lazy. Today I understand that Kenyan Nubians, whether citizens or not, do not belong.

The Kenyan government uses both ethnicity and territory to establish belonging. Since both Nubian ethnicity and their territory of occupancy are contested by the government, most Nubians live as de facto stateless persons without adequate protection under national and international law, irrespective of the fact that they should be considered Kenyan citizens under the Constitution. In Kenya nothing defines your citizenship more than your ethnicity. Nubians face institutionalised discrimination in issuance of documents. They are subjected to a vetting process of ethnic determination in order to acquire an identity card or passports.

Kenya today does not have official figures of Nubians and does not include them in census reports. There is no official recognition of the community; the Kenyan government had classified the community as ‘other Kenyans’ or just ‘others’ and has only recently started a process of recording Nubians as a named clan of other Kenyans.

Above all, Nubians live in temporary structures throughout Kenya and often on contested lands. Most Nubians’ settlements do not have title deeds and are only occupied on a Temporary Occupational Licence (TOL), leaving the present generation of Nubians as mere squatters.

Stateless individuals and communities like the Nubians are assumed to be hopeless and helpless victims, dependent upon the goodwill of others. Under the assumption that citizenship is the only vehicle for having a civic and political voice and that therefore stateless people lack any political identity, stateless people become less than fully human and are reduced to mere targets of humanitarian assistance. All energies are thus focused on how to acquire citizenship for stateless people as fast and as easily as possible.

What are the Nubians’ issues?

Obstacles to citizenship are also faced by other minority groups in Kenya such as Kenyan Somalis and Coastal Arabs although the Nubians have experienced some progress. The real progress in Nubian experience is in their adaptation and mastery of living in Kenya without belonging…

In 2003 the then Chairperson of the Kenyan Nubians’ Council, the late Yunis Ali, encouraged a procession of Nubians marching to Kenya’s High Court thus:

“My people! For a century, we have sought a compassionate hearing from all authorities in Kenya but we got none. Today, we march to the Kenyan High Court for justice – if not to get it, then as testimony that we stood up for our rights.”

In the end, the challenge of standing up to statelessness – or any human rights abuse – is that as a victim you see it through the emotional lenses of feelings and experience; others will then judge you as subjective. When you stand apart and subject the issue to objective criteria, legal definitions limit one’s expression; most of the legal terms are not expressive enough for local realities. For Kenyan Nubians the lack of a link to the state, lack of integration and lack of social acceptance have been part of our existence. We are neither Sudanese nor accepted as Kenyans.

As a statelessness advocate, I believe that legal links are important for anyone belonging in contemporary society; however, without addressing the social acceptability of any community of a people, groups like the Nubians will continue to live from one crisis to another.

The original article was published in Forced Migration Review, 2009. No. 32.

Last week, I read about Kurds laying claim to Iraq’s land and oil. Kurds in northern Iraq have taken steps toward further regional autonomy by finalizing their own constitution in the Kurdish parliament. The Iraqi government is not pleased about ever-bolder Kurdish claims to oil and gas revenues. Many American and Iraqi officials fear that Kurdistan is increasingly close to statehood, which could doom the Iraq’s federal arrangement.

Reading up on these recent developments reminded me of a my most memorable encounter with Kurdistan, which happened on September 5, 2007. Two days after I flew Iraqi president Jalal Talabani to a meeting with then-President George W. Bush, the Kurds reached an oil revenue-sharing deal with the Iraqi government. I know I’m not directly responsible for writing a page in history, but if you read the fine print, it’ll mention the pilot.

I was 20,000 feet above the Iraqi desert, flying an Air Force C-130 cargo plane en route to As Sulaymaniyah, a Kurdish governorate in northeastern Iraq near the border with Iran. No one in the crew had ever been there, so we opened up our airfield directory to check the airfield’s pertinent data.

Jehangir Irani with Pres. Jalal Talabani en route to meeting Pres. Bush. Photo: Jehangir Irani

The book lists airfields alphabetically, but finding As Sulaymaniyah wasn’t easy. It wasn’t under “s.” Nor was it under “Al,” “An” or “Ad.” Finally, after spelling it phonetically, “Alpha Sierra Sierra…,” did our navigator confirm it existed. But “Suly” didn’t just exist, it thrived. I saw none of the usual sights of war-torn Iraq. And I noticed a mix of Kurdish and Iraqi flags flying in this desert outpost just 160 miles north of Baghdad.

Where rising black smoke signals your arrival into Baghdad, Suly greets you with her rolling hills and valleys. Where dust and dirt line the floors of most Iraqi military facilities, Suly’s passenger terminal was so clean; let’s just say I wouldn’t be afraid to pick up where I left off after dropping my chow hall turkey sandwich.

Pres. George Bush’s meeting with Iraqi officials, Sept. 3, 2007. Photo: White House/Eric Draper

Then there’s the small matter of why I was there. My crew and I weren’t even scheduled to fly to Suly. But after landing in Baghdad, a high-priority task necessitated unloading our plane and flying to Suly with a short, bald Major as our only passenger - an unknown man who I labeled “the One.” After touching down in Suly, my plane was surrounded by a civilian team of former South African special forces. I was told by “the One” that Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, and a Kurd, was en route. This once placid airfield soon started buzzing, as doctors, political aides, and members of the Peshmerga, the famed Kurdish militia, found their way on to my plane.

On a culturally sensitive note, “the One” informed me that the Iraqi president shouldn’t be addressed as “Mr. Talabani.” I was to call the 73-year-old leader “Ma Jalal,” meaning “Uncle Jalal” in Kurdish. Though I’d never met the man, his charisma was apparent. Talabani wore a spotless silk suit that was impeccably pressed. His hair was coiffed slightly to the right, and his all-white mustache sat smartly on his upper lip. He was the gentleman that everybody would approach for a handshake and then walk away glowing.

I greeted Ma Jalal at my plane’s entrance and cranked the engines soon after he buckled up. We were now headed to Al Asad Airbase, a fairly large airfield controlled by the Marines, situated in the barren expanses of western Anbar province. It was here that the biggest surprise awaited us. In the distance stood Air Force One. President Bush had made yet another surprise trip to Iraq, and I was tasked with transporting the Iraqi president to meet him.

- Jehangir Irani

A Palestinian refugee stands with his belongings in Rafah Camp. Photo: Flickr user Rafahkid

Ahmed Moor was born and raised in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Recently laid off from a finance job in New York City, he plans to work for a micro-finance initiative inside Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon starting this fall. Though he is now an American citizen, Ahmed remembers what his life was like when his travel document was stamped “stateless.”

Worldfocus.org’s Stateless to Statehood explores a wide range of legal and political situations regarding the relationship between individuals and the states they live in. Kuwaiti Bidoon are considered de jure stateless because they lack government recognition and citizenship status. Palestinians in Gaza are stateless to the extent that they do not yet belong to a true state.

I was born in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, Palestine. My status as a refugee was compounded by the fact that I lacked a state identity. This was my status for the first ten years of my life.

I did not become an American citizen until 1995. My naturalization document has a picture of ten-year-old me and the word “Stateless” printed right above it. I remember my mother crying when she saw that word on her own document.

What did I know about statelessness? I am from somewhere. I have a culture and a people. I am from Palestine, and I am a Palestinian.

Palestine was supposed to be recognized as a sovereign state alongside Israel in 1948, but it never was. Palestinians from the Occupied Territories mostly do not have full citizenship rights and are now governed by a constantly shifting mix of overbearing Israel, impotent Fatah, and ascendant Hamas.

Sometimes I forget what it means to be stateless. Nowadays, I rarely think about how many times my family was refused entry a country. It has been so long since I slept inside airports because we did not have the privilege of leaving.

Yet, statelessness is more than lacking the privileges that sovereign states extend to their citizens. Being stateless means something more basic. Statelessness is sheer humiliation and the degradation of human dignity.

The stateless human being is inferior. He has failed to do what other men have done for themselves. It means that, for whatever reason, he is unable to govern himself. He is not complete enough to take control of his life and the lives of others in his community. He has failed to take his place in the United Nations - that great hall of mankind.

Men celebrate their independence days everywhere, but the stateless man is not independent. He is dependent and unwelcome. The stateless man lacks maturity and requires stewardship. He must always be grateful to others for allowing him to work and to live. He is a burden, always compelled to prostrate himself and apologize for intruding.

That’s what statelessness meant to a ten-year-old boy.

Today, I know better. Although I am no longer stateless, the real change in my status has nothing to do with my American passport. I know the history of Palestine and the injustice that bred the injustice that violates my dignity and does not permit me to govern myself in my country. My view of myself has changed but my struggle is the same. It is a struggle for control of my life and the lives of others in my community.

The failure is no longer mine. The failure rests with the people who do not recognize my citizenship and equality. My oppressor erodes his own humanity through his treatment of me. I am not insecure in the fundamental worth of my being; I know my intrinsic value.

So what does it mean to be stateless?

- Ahmed Moor

A vibrant and enterprising community of Tibetans lives in Ladakh, the easternmost area of the contested state of Jammu and Kashmir. Thousands of essentially stateless Tibetans have migrated westward to Ladakh since Chinese forces clamped down on Tibet in 1959. Although ethnic Tibetans in China have Chinese citizenship, the Tibetan exiles in India have residency permits but not Indian citizenship.

Tibetans arrived as refugees and remain refugees. The Tibetans feel at home in Ladakh, because of their common Buddhist faith and trading linkages. Even though many Tibetans were born in Ladakh, insurmountable statelessness pinches this Tibetan community.

Nawang Tso, a 47-year-old who has no imminent hope of returning to his ancestral land, said:

Neither we can get government job nor own land. I was born with this status and wonder how many generations of my family will have to live with this status.

Buddhist lamas in Ladakh, India. Photo: Luv Puri

For the last fifty years, Tibet has been governed by China. Tibetan refugees in Ladakh, like most other Tibetans, have rallied behind their spiritual leader. But the Dalai Lama does not demand complete secession from China. The present political stalemate between the Chinese government and the Tibetan leadership is over the territorial limits of the proposed Tibetan province, under Chinese sovereignty.

Tibetans want a Greater Tibet — the amalgamation of the Tibetan Autonomous Region with the whole of Qinghai province, western parts of Sichuan, areas of Yunnan and a part of Gansu. The Chinese government objects, emphasizing that ethnicity is no basis for border demarcation of Chinese provinces.

For the Tibetan refuges, Ladakh was a natural settlement area due to its culture, religion and landscape. Famous for its pristine beauty, Ladakh’s landscape has stark similarities with Utah’s Salt Lake City. Tibetan Buddhism influenced the culture of Ladakh and even vice-versa, as Buddhism spread to other parts of Asia through Ladakh. The centuries-old monasteries found in almost every village throughout Ladakh indicate this influence.

Similar to Tibetans, most Ladakhi homes have a small chapel containing various religious objects and sacred images. Other visible signs of the Buddhist faith are omnipresent prayer flags, stupas and mani walls.

Ladakhi cuisine shows the impact of the Tibetan community. This is true of restaurants thronged by foreign tourists and even of traditional Ladakhi homes. Gyal Wangchuk, a Ladakhi owner of the famous Siachen Hotel in the middle of Leh, Ladakh’s capital, said, “The majority of homes in the urban areas are no longer eating Ladakhi food, as now the new generation loves the Tibetan food. The famous Tibetan Momos can be found in every nook and corner of Ladakh.”

The Tibetan refugee community is staying in rented accommodations. The community’s employment prospects have been highly limited for the last five decades. In the middle of Leh, Ladakh’s capital, a Tibetan market has been established. The Tibetan community utilizes its contacts in Tibet to import black market Chinese-made goods to eastern Ladakh. Shoes, electronics, and pearls used to flood the main Tibetan markets, which are thronged by tourists during the summer. A pessimistic trader summarized the situation:

The times changed, as now the clandestine trade via eastern Ladakh became difficult. Most of the Chinese goods reaching here come through legal means, i.e. through the plains via Nepal. Profits have decreased. Uncertainty over our status will continue to affect us professionally, psychologically and physically.

- Luv Puri

The attorney general’s office in Malaysia says 10 immigration officers are being investigated after the U.S. State Department placed Malaysia on its list of the world’s worst human trafficking offenders last month.

Karen Zusman, an independent journalist, recently returned from Malaysia, where she reported on the plight of Burmese refugees.

For more, listen to an audio documentary and view images from Malaysia: Malaysia refuses to recognize Burmese as refugees

Statelessness could mean you are trapped in the country you were born — with no birth certificate, no passport and no right to vote. You many not be able to own land ownership, access to health care and legal employment. Twelve to 15 million people live in limbo without the benefits of nationality.

Below is an audio slideshow with excerpts from our online radio show on statelessness with Dawn Calabia of Refugees International and journalist Bill Berkeley.

The feature explains statelessness with photos of the following stateless groups: Palestinians at the Iraq-Syria border, the Bidoon in Kuwait, the Rohingyas in Bangladesh, the Haitians in the Dominican Republic and the Eritreans in Ethiopia.

(View full post to see video)

The Naxalites are an assortment of violent Maoist rebel groups who stage internecine attacks on Indian government targets to bring attention to region’s blight. With about 20,000 fighters, the Naxal-Maoist Insurgency rages in 40 percent of India’s territory. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the Naxalites India’s biggest threat to national security, and they continue to attract support from a wide array of castes and tribal groups.

India’s Naxal-affected districts (red signifies most influence) Map: Wikipedia user Planemad

While conducting malnutrition research in the heavily tribal state of Jharkhand — one of India’s most impoverished states — one woman told me this story:

My one-year-old son fell sick one day. The nearest health center is 20 miles away. Going there would mean losing a day’s wage. The whole family would have to go without food that day. I had other children to feed, it was not possible. My son slowly got too weak to play, to stand up and one day he died.

Villagers with stories like this strengthen the Naxal insurgency in the region. Data shows that India’s child malnutrition rate is 47 percent (as compared to 30 percent in sub-Saharan Africa). India also ranks 66th among the 88 countries in the 2008 Global Hunger Index.

Schoolchildren in heavily tribal Jharkhand on Republic Day. Photo: Flickr user premasagar

In 1967, the Naxalites started their revolutionary movement in a small West Bengal village called Naxalbari. With huge support from highly-marginalized tribal communities, the Naxalite-controlled “Red Corridor” starts in Andhra Pradesh and runs through eastern Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Bihar.

Labeling this highly complex issue a matter of law and order, the West Bengal state government sent in police and paramilitary forces and recently banned the Maoist party after recent violence in Lalgarh, West Bengal. And by pigeonholing the Naxalites as “terrorists,” the government has further isolated Naxalite supporters.

But government forces have been accused of gross human rights violations. For each alleged government abuse, the Naxalites have responded with double the level of violence. Large-scale killings increase during elections when Naxalites take passenger trains hostage and launch attacks on police. The Naxalite ideology has led both sides onto a path of increasing bloodshed in a “brutal low-level war.”

Naxalism is a complex social issue with roots in the tremendous deprivation of millions of rural Indians. Negating the politics of development could help turn Naxalism into a true mass movement. Time will tell whether this will create a much larger civil war or be crushed by the state.

More likely than not, Bastar in Chattisgarh, Palamau in Jharkhand and the thousands of other forgotten Indian hinterlands will continue to bleed.

In the Naxal belt and beyond, millions of Indians — just like the woman who lost her son — will continue to starve.

- Anasuya Ray

As ethnic clashes between the Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese turn deadly, Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explores the recent riots involving China’s Uighur minority. The show also looks at Uighur aspirations of secession, Han Chinese immigration and Chinese nationalism.

The Muslim Uighurs live in the oil-rich Xinjiang region, north of Tibet. The Chinese government has imposed restrictions on the Uighurs’ religious practice in this autonomous region and many Uighurs resent Chinese rule and complain of discrimination.

Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosts the following panel of guests:

Many Uighurs complain of discrimination and higher rates of unemployment.

Enze Han is a PhD candidate in political science at George Washington University. He grew up in Hangzhou, China, and came to the U.S. in 2004. His research focuses on ethnic minorities in China, and he received a fellowship to study the politics of separatism.

Andrew James Nathan is a political science professor at Columbia University. His teaching and research interests include Chinese politics, foreign policy, and human rights. His books include Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization and How East Asians View Democracy. Watch the Worldfocus’ television interview with Prof. Nathan: Scores killed in China in violent ethnic clashes.

Alim Seytoff is spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress, Vice-President of Uyghur-American Association, and director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project. He came to the U.S. from China in 1996.

The show also includes a statement from Wenqi Gao, the spokesperson for the Consulate General of China in New York, and, as always, questions from our listeners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Kaj17 under a Creative Commons license.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Ben Piven

Martin Savidge with the CNN Kosovo team, along with their translator, Gulka. Photo: Martin Savidge

About 10,000 people died in the 1998-99 Kosovo war between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in pursuit of national self-determination. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and this month marks the 10th anniversary of the end of the war.

Following our online radio show on statelessness, Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge describes his experience reporting on the struggle of Kosovars forced to flee in the war.

You can go from something to nothing in just 139 steps. I know, because I counted the footfalls.

It was the spring of 1999 along the border between Albania and Kosovo. The war was raging, and people were trying to get out of its reach. Many fled south, heading to where I was — on the Albanian side of the Morini border crossing. I watched the metamorphosis from a gully, marginally sheltered from occasional gunfire and mortar rounds.

On the Kosovo side of the bridge, the frightened people still had a history, somewhere — a home and a life. One hundred and thirty-nine steps later, they emerged into Albania with none of that, only the clothes they wore. Some even came without families, having been separated in the chaos.

Like most wars, this one was triggering a humanitarian crisis and Albania was in no position to handle it. That day, the traffic was heavier than usual, most of it tractors pulling wagons filled with a bumper crop of women and children.

We began asking questions. Our interpreter was from Kosovo — a teenager who in the early, frantic days of the conflict had become separated from her family after the Serbs forced them from their home, and NATO bombs sent everyone on the run. She had crossed into Albania at this very same checkpoint. A CNN crew found her while doing interviews in a refugee camp. She stood out because she spoke English.

The producer quickly realized that despite the best intentions of the relief agency, a refugee camp is still a very dangerous place for a young girl. The camps were rife with reports of women and children vanishing, kidnapped for the sex trades. After all, who would miss them? They were nobodies, lost in the confusion of war.

Gulka was brought to the safety of the CNN house and hired as a translator. Eventually, we took in a number of similarly-rescued young people, temporarily orphaned by the upheaval of the war.

The group of women before us said they had no idea where their husbands were. The men of their town had been taken away by Serb soldiers and police when the fighting began. The women said they had fled into the mountains, fearing the soldiers would come back for them. They also told us that while it might have looked deserted across the border, just beyond our view was a heavy presence of Serb troops, tanks and artillery.

As if on cue, our conversation was interrupted by a blast. The first mortar round struck on the Serb side of the border…but the successive explosions walked their way over the line.

I was impressed that instead of running when the first round struck, most of the refugees dropped flat. This clearly wasn’t their first time under fire. Even the kids knew to get down. It was only after the sixth explosion that the crowd finally broke and the air was suddenly filled with screams and wails, the sound of revving engines and drifting smoke.

A week later, as we neared the border, we were suddenly forced to stop by the sight walking toward us…bedraggled columns of men. They staggered, stumbled and shuffled. Some men supported others; many were bloodied and beaten, showing scars. All of them looked emaciated and filthy. We pulled over and started filming, gathering a story and documenting what would later be judged as war crimes.

The men described being released from detention centers and camps days earlier. They told of torture and starvation, of unspeakable horrors inflicted on humans by humans. Some cried as they spoke, and one collapsed. Another died at the side of the road — and the men just kept coming.

Eventually, we moved our coverage to the refugee camps. The scenes and sounds of pain and anguish were overwhelming. Tony, another one of our young adopted interpreters, went with us. He had escaped to Albania early in the crisis. As he listened to the men’s stories he often had to wipe the tears from his eyes.

When the interview was finished, as was their habit, the teen translators would often ask personal questions, like where the men were from or if they knew anything of friends and family. After one such conversation, Tony suddenly jumped up. Something the man said had set him off. He raced through the crowd shouting. We ran after him, afraid we’d lose him in the crush of people…maybe for good. Eventually we caught up and found him deep in the embrace of an older man. The two were so overpowered with emotion they couldn’t get out a word, only tears and shuddering gasps. But you didn’t need words to understand. It was obvious…in the middle of a war, in the middle of the chaos on the edge of Albania, Tony had found his father.

- Martin Savidge

Many Haitians migrate to the Dominican Republic for employment and are subsequently subjected to discrimination.

Up to one million people of Haitian origin currently live in the Dominican Republic, and many are subjected to discrimination and violence.

Many impoverished Haitians cross the border into the Dominican Republic looking for arable land, fuel and work. Often, they face racial prejudice and their Dominican-born children are refused citizenship because they are considered “in transit.” These children are left stateless.

In May of this year, a Haitian migrant was beheaded in the Dominican Republic. The incident sparked renewed outrage over treatment of Haitians in the country. Roger Leduc of “Upside Down World,” a Worldfocus contributor, describes the escalating human rights concerns.

Recent incidents involving Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic should alert even the most jaded observers that an already very serious human rights problem is getting worse.

A confluence of factors — a rapid succession of executions in the last few months, arrogance and defiance from Dominican government officials, institutions and citizenry vis-a-vis the plight of Haitian workers, the shameful indifference of the Haitian government, and the relatively superior economic and military position of the Dominican Republic — has created a pre-genocidal atmosphere that raises the specter of the 1937 mass murder of tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants.

What is alarming about these events is the rapidity, spontaneity, anger and brutality with which Dominican mobs react to rumored misdeeds of Haitians. This points to a deep well of prejudice and hatred, fed by a negative, stereotyped view of Haitians. It also denotes the distorted self-image and misconceptions some Dominicans have about their cultural and racial differences with their island brothers. Some of these opinions are typical anti-immigrant resentments: Haitians are stealing jobs, depressing the price of labor, etc.. Other sentiments, evoking fears of the proverbial “barbarians at the gates” and of Haitians changing the DR’s supposedly European and Christian culture, stem from century-old events and a misunderstood history. They are emotional and even visceral - and therefore more explosive and dangerous. Haitians are considered as the “enemy” who deserve their lot and who should be punished whenever Dominicans deem it appropriate.

Dominican government pronouncements feed this xenophobia. They not only deny any mistreatment of Haitians but accuse Haitians of fomenting violence. Haitians, they say, should then be thankful that Dominicans, more than any other nation, give them aid and succor, a Dominican version of Rudyard Kipling’s “white man’s burden.”

In 2005, the Dominican government reacted rabidly to the decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that children born to Haitian parents in the Dominican Republic should be given full citizenship rights as Dominican law prescribes. It claimed that there was an international conspiracy against the Dominican Republic. Similarly, Haitian Prime Minister Michelle Pierre-Louis’ mild protest over Nérilus’ decapitation received vigorous rebukes from both President Leonel Fernandez and the archbishop —  the DR’s putative moral leaders. The Dominican police and judicial authorities are not only conspicuously silent but also take part in massive abuse and repression.

One of the reactions to Pierre-Louis’ whiny protest was that she should have toed the line set by President René Préval, who refused to denounce the beheading and stated that the case should be left to the Dominican authorities. There could be no better signal to Dominicans that they can do as they please with Haitians. [...]

Many petit-bourgeois Haitians ignore the plight of Haitian sugarcane cutters, who come from either the poor peasantry or the slums. In the feudal caste system in Haiti, such working-class people are considered disposable sub-humans. Some well-to-do Haitians are proud to trumpet how often they go on vacation in the Dominican Republic and spend their money, oblivious to the abject situation of our compatriots and enthralled by the great “development” of our neighbor. Haiti’s moneyed class feels no remorse in taking profits reaped in Haiti and investing them in the DR, claiming that the situation is too unstable at home — an instability and precariousness many of them helped create.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user elmarto under a Creative Commons license.

Imagine you have no birth certificate, no passport and no legal rights. You’re trapped in the country where you were born, but no document indicates that you even exist. The state doesn’t recognize you, so you can’t vote, you can’t access education and you can’t obtain formal employment.

This is a worst-case situation, but across the globe, between 12 and 15 million people live in various stages of statelessness, which means they lack citizenship in any country.

Some of the most notably stateless people include the Palestinians of the Middle East, the ethnic Tutsis of Central Africa, some Roma in Europe and Haitian children in the Dominican Republic.

Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explored the common themes that surface among stateless people — economic discrimination, social exclusion, identity and the feeling of invisibility.

Read a full transcript.

Martin Savidge hosted the following guests:

Bill Berkeley, previously an investigative reporter and editorial writer at The New York Times, teaches journalism at Columbia University. He is the author of The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa and a forthcoming book on statelessness.

Dawn Calabia is a senior adviser for Refugees International. She has 30 years of experience with foreign policy analysis, human rights issues and public advocacy. She has handled governmental and non-governmental relations in the U.S. and the Caribbean for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and has led numerous fact-finding missions to Central America, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa.

The show also includes audio clips from:

Julia Harrington, a senior legal officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, who explains how her organization uses legal channels to advocate for stateless people. Julia has brought cases before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Adam Hussein, who was born stateless as a Nubian in Kenya, and is currently the project coordinator of the Open Society East Africa Initiative.

Samira Trad, the director of Beirut-based Frontiers-Ruwad, a human rights NGO.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Ben Piven