The Risk of Statelessness: A Framework for Protecting the Right to Nationality in Hispaniola

• In Event: Imagining the Spaces and Faces of the Nation: History, Migration, and Diaspora in/beyond Hispaniola

Abstract

The United Nations is actively engaged in a campaign to eradicate statelessness by 2024. Who is stateless, how that determination will be conducted, and the circumstances under which statelessness protection will be applied are questions that will drive this campaign. One of the most active frontiers in the effort to eradicate statelessness is on the island of Hispaniola, where the government of the Dominican Republic has for decades worked to institutionalize a legal system that excludes persons of Haitian descent from Dominican nationality. Central to this conflict is a question about whether these actions by the Dominican state leave persons of Haitian descent stateless – without nationality anywhere in the world. This question has been the subject of a decade long debate between the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Dominican justice system, which have expressed manifestly contrary views about the existence of statelessness. In the most recent iteration of this debate, the Inter-American Court found that the Dominican Republic had an obligation to grant its nationality to a child born in its territory who faces a “risk of statelessness.” This article explains the implications of this normative development and argues that a framework to quantify the level of “risk of statelessness” that will trigger international protection must soon follow to ensure the integrity of statelessness protection regime in the region.

Author

• David C Baluarte, Washington & Lee University