Statelessness in the Caribbean. Kristy A. Belton
Freedom House, which scores states according to their practices in the areas of civil liberties and political rights, classifies all the countries in the Caribbean—with the exception of Cuba and Haiti—as “free” (2015, n. pag.). Caribbean states thus score well in the categories of political participation, freedom of speech and of the press, social and economic freedoms, and the rule of law, among other criteria. Specifically, The Bahamas earns the highest freedom scores possible (1 out of 7) in both civil liberties and political rights, while the Dominican Republic scores slightly lower, with a score of 3 and 2 (out of 7) in each category, respectively.
Beside the comparative “liberal/democratic” nature of the region, UNHCR is concerned about statelessness in the Caribbean, making the area a significant case study of this phenomenon from both a policy and an academic vantage. Statelessness is an issue in the region for several reasons. First, several countries do not grant citizenship automatically to children born of noncitizens on their soil if a parent is not a citizen, a permanent resident or legally present. Individuals are thus at risk of statelessness if they are unable to acquire the nationality of their parents and if the state of their birth has no provision in place to grant citizenship to stateless children. For example, and as I explain in Chapters 3 and 4, both The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic have stipulations in their laws that make it difficult to obtain citizenship at birth if one is born to noncitizen or “illegally” resident parents.
Second, few Caribbean states have ratified the two UN statelessness conventions and incorporated preventative measures against statelessness into their national legislation. For instance, only four Caribbean states (Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago)37 have ratified the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (UN 1954), which delineates the rights and duties of a stateless person in a state party to the treaty; and only Jamaica has ratified the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which aims to prevent and reduce statelessness globally (UN 1961; UN 2016 Treaty Collection).38 Moreover, the majority of these states lack statelessness status determination (SSD) procedures, making it difficult to determine who is and who is not stateless in a systematic and transparent manner and to thereby furnish the stateless with a legal, protective status.
The problem of statelessness is of such significance in the Caribbean that UNHCR’s office for the Americas stated that one of its four strategic priorities for 2012 was to: “Prevent statelessness in the Caribbean by advocating for accession to international instruments, mapping the population concerned or at risk, providing technical and legal support and helping them with their registration and documentation” (UNHCR 2012e, 96). For 2013, this theme continued as “there will be a strong focus on the prevention and reduction of statelessness and other nationality issues, mainly through birth registration and documentation” (quoted in Belton 2015, 129). And, in 2015, following on the cusp of the successful Cartagena +30 process, the organization declared that one of its strategic priorities is to resolve statelessness in the region (2015c, n. pag.). Furthermore, UNHCR is expressly focused on “ensur[ing] access to a nationality for undocumented people of Haitian descent” (2012e, 97). This policy development is important because, as I explain in Chapters 3 and 4, in both The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, the two main destination sites for Haitian migrants (IOM 2013, 23), individuals of Haitian descent struggle to obtain, or retain, citizenship.
I chose The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic as case studies not only because they are democracies with a large presence of Haitian migrants and their children—and therefore an increased likelihood of containing populations who are at risk of statelessness—but also because of the notable differences that exist between them. From a demographic perspective, The Bahamas has a much smaller population at just over 350,000 persons (Government of The Bahamas 2012, 1), while the Dominican Republic has a population of around 9.4 million (Government of the Dominican Republic 2010a). The estimated tens of thousands of Haitians and their descendants in The Bahamas therefore make up a larger percentage of the Bahamian population than the estimated 380,000 in the Dominican Republic.39 Additionally, black Bahamians make up the majority of the population in The Bahamas (Government of The Bahamas 2012, 10) and thus share the same racial classification as most Haitian migrants. The DR, on the other hand, consists of a largely mixed population. These racial differences could play a role in mitigating or exacerbating any tensions toward Haitian migrants and their offspring, as well as affect how each community approaches the inclusion of noncitizen insiders.
Culturally, The Bahamas is a mixture of Baptist, Anglican and Catholic adherents, with the majority identifying as Baptist (Government of the Bahamas 2012, 11), while the DR is largely Catholic.40 The former was a British colony whose residents’ primary language is English, while the latter was a Spanish colony whose residents’ principal language is Spanish. From a legal and political perspective, The Bahamas and the DR are also distinct. The Bahamas is a common law country, while the DR observes continental legal praxis (“civil law”). Although both states are classified as democracies, The Bahamas operates under the Westminster-style parliamentary system and the DR is a republic headed by a presidency. Significant differences thus exist between the two cases, yet both states engage in exclusionary membership practices that primarily affect individuals of Haitian descent. By choosing to undertake fieldwork in two countries that exhibit significant demographic, cultural, and institutional differences—and that similarly generate forced displacement on their territories—I strengthen the external validity of my findings (Leedy and Ormrod 2005, 99–100).
I undertook fieldwork in The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic between 2009 and 2013 to examine how each state’s laws operated in practice with regard to the fulfillment of a human right to a nationality and to investigate how lack of formal membership in a state affects a person’s sense of place identity and ability to be a self-determining agent. The 2009 fieldwork in The Bahamas was exploratory in nature as questions of citizenship denial and potential statelessness had not yet been investigated, whether by academics, policymakers, lawyers, or other experts. I was thus trying to establish whether statelessness existed, why it existed if it did (through which procedures or processes), where it existed (specific islands), and what ethnic groups were affected. I therefore conducted the 2009 interviews under the condition of anonymity for the study participants because I wanted them to speak as freely, and provide as much information as they could, on questions surrounding citizenship, discrimination, and national identity, given these subjects’ sensitive nature in the country.
I conducted sixteen anonymous interviews in 2009.41 Fourteen of these took place in the capital, Nassau, while the remaining two were conducted via telephone. Participants included former and current government officials, academics, community leaders, lawyers, a civil servant, a journalist, an amateur film documentarian, and a graduate student who had worked in the local Haitian communities. None of those interviewed were stateless or at risk of statelessness, but two were Haitian and held prominent positions in the Haitian community. Due to lack of data on statelessness in The Bahamas, I purposely selected the majority of the participants because they held (or had held) leadership positions in the foreign affairs or immigration sectors of government or the nascent human rights community, or were experts on Bahamian migration or nationality law and data collection.
I returned to The Bahamas in the fall of 2012 to carry out a second wave of interviews. I interviewed thirteen individuals in Nassau and seven in Marsh Harbour, Abaco. Participants included lawyers, activists, elected and appointed officials, educators, businesspersons, healthcare professionals, a police and a defense force officer, as well as the Haitian ambassador and Bahamian-born students of Haitian descent from the College of The Bahamas (COB).42 An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided the Ministry’s perspective via email. Of the twenty-one persons interviewed in 2012, eight had either faced the risk of statelessness or were stateless at some point.43 As in the 2009 study, I performed purposeful sampling, but limited such sampling to government officials and lawyers. I obtained interviews with the other participants via snowball sampling or