International human rights organization Amnesty International says that the Dominican Republic should not implement a Constitutional Court ruling that it says could leave hundreds of thousands of people stateless.
The Constitutional Court rejected applying the place of birth principle (jus solis) to everyone born in the Dominican Republic, and instead offered a fast-track residency process. The Constitutional Court adhered to the long-standing more widespread application of Dominican citizenship to children born in the country only to those whose parents have legal status in the Dominican Republic.
“The full implementation of this ruling will have a devastating impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people whose identity documents would be cancelled and, therefore, would see many of their human rights n freedom of movement, education, work and access to healthcare n totally denied,” said Chiara Liguori, Amnesty International researcher on the Caribbean.
The Central Electoral Board (JCE) says that thousands of people have secured Dominican birth certificates and identity papers irregularly.
In September, the Constitutional Court ruled that Juliana Deguis, who was born in the Dominican Republic in 1984 to illegal Haitian parents, had been wrongly registered as Dominican at birth.
Amnesty International says the case could have far-reaching discriminatory effects, particularly for Dominicans of Haitian descent. The ruling applies to all nationalities.
The Constitutional Court also ordered the Central Electoral Board (JCE) to search all birth registries from 1929 onwards for people who had been irregularly registered and recognized as Dominican citizens. It said their cases should be treated in the same way as Juliana’s.
Some parts of the ruling have already started to be implemented. Deguis was allowed to stay in the country with the issue of a temporary residency, pending a National Regularization Plan that will decide the fate of those deemed to be residing in the country illegally. The measure would benefit hundreds of thousands of illegal Haitians who have lived here and raised families here for years, and have not regularized their status. One of the biggest obstacles is the Haitian government’s weakness in issuing birth certificates and identification papers in Haiti, so most Haitians who cross over to the Dominican Republic are completely undocumented.
Amnesty International argues that the Constitutional Court ruling violates the Dominican’s Republic human rights obligations and would contravene a 2005 landmark decision of the Inter-American Court for Human Rights. They also argue it violates a basic principle of law, explicitly stated in Dominican Constitution, that prohibits retroactive application of the law.
A recent survey conducted by the National Statistics Office (ONE) found that 244,151 people were the children of “foreign” parents. Of those, 86% were of Haitian origin. Under the new measure, they will benefit from receiving fast-tracked residency papers to legalize their status in the Dominican Republic. As a next step they could apply for naturalization as Dominicans.
www.amnesty.org/en/news/dominican-republic-must-retract-ruling-could-leave-thousands-stateless-2013-10-18
www.elcaribe.com.do/2013/10/18/amnistia-internacional-pide-revertir-fallo-del