DUSHANBE, November 22, 2011, Asia-Plus — To ratify the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons Tajikistan has to overcome administrative and financial barriers, Tajik Deputy Foreign minister, Nizomiddin Zohidov, announced at a meeting with experts on protection of rights of stateless persons in Dushanbe on November 21.
According to him, Tajikistan is currently undergoing domestic procedures on ratification of this document.
Tajik MFA representative Manouchehr Mahmoudov noted that there were many problems regarding ratification and implementation of the convention. “The domestic procedure itself does not take so much time,” said Mahmoudov, “The problem is implementation of the convention.”
If Tajikistan ratifies the Convention, under Article 28 of the Convention it will be must to issue to stateless persons lawfully staying in its territory travel documents for the purpose of travel outside their territory, unless compelling reasons of national security or public order otherwise require, and the provisions of the schedule to this Convention shall apply with respect to such documents. Under this article, the Contracting States may issue such a travel document to any other stateless person in their territory; they shall in particular give sympathetic consideration to the issue of such a travel document to stateless persons in their territory who are unable to obtain a travel document from the country of their lawful residence.
“It is an expensive project costing some one million euros. The government is currently not able to finance this project,” said the MFA representative, “Therefore, we have asked international community since 2008 to help us in this direction.”
According to the UNHCR Country office in Tajikistan, there are 440 stateless persons in Tajikistan and 2,300 persons whose citizenship status is not determined in Tajikistan. Persons whose citizenship status is not determined are risking proving to become stateless persons (mostly these are persons who are still using Soviet passports).
“The actual number of stateless persons living in Tajikistan is unknown,” Mr. Jose Euseda, UNHCR Representative for Tajikistan said. “When persons live isolatedly from society, with limited access to spectrum of social and economic rights, they may become victims of human trafficking and extremists in the region.”
He stressed that Tajikistan must solve the issue of identification of statelessness, because official statistics include only persons who have been successfully documented as stateless persons or foreign citizens permanently residing in the country.
“In order to determine the actual number of stateless persons in Tajikistan, UNHCR proposes to carry out a nationwide registration campaign to reveal persons whose citizenship status is not determined and we are ready to help the Tajik authorities in this direction,” Mr. Euseda said.
The United Nations Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights were approved on December 10, 1948. Of significance, the Declaration at Article 15 affirms that everyone has the right to a nationality and no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was promulgated on July 28, 1951. Despite an original intention, it did not include any content about the status of stateless persons and there was no protocol regarding measures to effect the reduction of statelessness.
On April 26, 1954, ECOSOC adopted a Resolution to convene a Conference of Plenipotentiaries to regulate and improve the status of stateless persons by an international agreement. The ensuing Conference adopted the Convention on September 28, 1954. The Convention entered into force on 6 June 1960. As of September 23, 2011 there were 68 state parties to the convention.
