Any connection between birth registration and statelessness is therefore dependent on country context. Plan commissioned research in Thailand and the Domincan Republic to study this connection in more depth. The pronounced poverty levels and instability in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, have driven many Haitians across the border to the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which is thought to contain up to two million Haitians. In the Dominican Republic, the principle of jus soli prevails. However, birth registration and nationality are closely entwined and a Dominican birth certificate has become the required proof of Dominican nationality. Children of Haitian origin, or children suspected of having Haitian roots, are being systematically denied birth registration as a means of denying them Dominican citizenship. This is creating new cases of statelessness in the country every day. In early 2008, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child noted its concerns about the Dominican Republic’s policy on birth registration. It urged the state to adopt a policy in which all children born in the country could receive a birth certificate. This included children from marginalised and vulnerable groups, so that they could acquire a nationality in order to prevent them from becoming stateless.34 In Thailand, too, the issue of statelessness is a problem, with a suspected one million stateless people residing in the country.35 Plan’s research found the relationship between birth registration and nationality to be complex and that the link is not so clear cut as in the Dominican Republic. However, in both cases, children of migrants are at increased risk of statelessness due to their lack of access to the birth registration system. Our research concluded that the underlying reasons for a restrictive policy on birth registration and access to nationality for the children of migrants were political and economic motivations and concerns over national security.
“Without documents we have no value, we cannot exercise our rights.” Child in Nicaragua
The impact of non-registration on children
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