Freedom of Movement Restrictions: Coming to a European Country Near You

This week has brought some distressing news for fans of freedom of movement. 

German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung has published a report revealing that the German and French Ministers of the Interior are seeking to modify the Schengen Agreemment, the treaty that allows for passport and visa-free travel throughout most of the territory of the EU. According to the letter, they seek to reintroduce border controls for temporary periods of 30 days in order to "curb illegal immigration". This comes on the heels of some German admonishments of Greece in failing to protect its borders (instead opting for creepy immigrant round-ups that violate human rights) AND results of immigration surveys showing that many persons from Southern Europe and elsewhere continue to seek asylum in Western European countries.

Der Spiegel quotes sources speculating that this is all political posturing to appeal to far-right voters in time for the French election. But is it? Following Sarkozy's adventures in deporting Roma from France (which, as you'll recall, drew comparisons to Nazi Germany's deportations of persons on the basis of ethnic background) its not so clear that conservative politicians aren't willing to put their money where their mouth is and disregard Schengen.(Just look at Denmark!)

And while we have Germany and France promising not to let people out, we have Macedonia promising to keep certain kinds of people in. What kind of people, you ask? 

In 2011, the ERRC documented at least 10 cases in which Romani people were denied the right to exit the country at Macedonian border crossings to Bulgaria and Serbia. Border guards regularly stop Romani individuals who they believe may be seeking asylum abroad, denying them the right to leave the countries.

..You guessed it. The European Roma Rights Centre is calling on the Macedonian government to end discrimination against Roma people seeking to travel outside of their country. (Which, if I remember correctly, is a basic human right.) But this baseline discrimination might be just the beginning- the government has announced that it will introduce measures to prevent persons from leaving the country who have once claimed asylum in another state. This measure as well is more than likely to heavily target Roma.

Between Southern Europe cracking down on immigrant and refugee rights and making it harder to move north, and Northern European countries disregarding their own treaties for politically opportunistic reasons, we have a real problem in Europe right now. The question is, what do the citizens of Europe value more? Their freedom of movement, or their freedom from foreigners?

Germany and France Seek Reintroduction of Controls

Serbia: MoU on birth registration of legally invisible Roma

Min. of Human and Minority Rights Milan Markovic

Between being weeks away from an election and locked into an EU accession process, Serbian politicians are in major suck-up mode, especially on transparency and human rights. However, there's no reason not to take today's news optimistically:

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, Public Administration and Local Self-Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Ombudsman signed a Memorandum of Understanding establishing the basis for closer cooperation to address the issue of birth registration of Roma ethnic minority who are not registered in official records. -(google translate of UNHCR Serbia's release)

The deputy head of EU delegation to Serbia, Adriano Martins, was also in attendance. Serbia has been under major pressure to advance the human rights situation of the Roma, and pledged back in December to try to make citizenship more widely available at the UNHCR conference of ministers. So far, however, they have done exactly nothing to implement the 1961 Convention or improve their poorly organized birth registration laws. As it stands, persons are required to present an identity to card to register the birth of their child and therefore, children of legally invisible persons are rendered legally invisible themselves. Since I am working on this issue right now, I have some unofficial, opinionated recommendations for what they should attempt do with this MoU:

1.)With the help of UNHCR, establish a procedure for determining statelessness of parents in order to comply with Article 1 of the 1961 Convention (requiring that children born stateless are granted citizenship.)

2.) Allow all persons giving birth on the territory of Serbia- with or without documents- to register their children at birth, as required by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This should apply to all persons giving birth on the territory without any discrimination.

3.) Allow for late registration of persons who never made it into the birth registry books. Allow for a range of evidence to prove the fact of birth, including use of witnesses and/ or DNA tests.

4.) Make birth registration and late registration mandatory and free, and disseminate information about the benefits of the procedure through various means, such as radio ads.

These steps may be more difficult to implement after elections and the accompanying shuffle in characters, but it does seem as though the time is right for focusing on improvements to human rights standards. I think NGO's and stakeholders should use this momentum and the spotlight of the EU to mount additional pressure on the government to do something other than signing agreements and publicizing them.

Regardless, its great to see the Serbian government paying attention to this issue and ostensibly moving forward towards a solution.

Gigantic new CoE report on Roma Rights Tackles Statelessness

Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe commissioner for Human Rights, has been a total rockstar when it comes to defending the rights of Roma and stateless persons in Europe. So it comes as no surprise that he is behind a massive new report coming out today called "Human Rights of Roma and Travellers in Europe". The report is 254 pages covering 47 countries, and covers as many relevant topics as you could ask for: forced sterilization, hate speech, human trafficking, housing issues, and of course- statelessness and access to documentation. 

I haven't had a chance to read through the entire thing yet (I did just get it 10 minutes ago, after all) but from what I can tell there is serious attention paid to the issue of statelesssness among Roma. Interestingly, the report doesn't fuss around with distinctions between de facto and de jure statelessness, nor does he bother characterizing people as "at a risk for statelessness" or "legally invisible." Nope, for the purposes of this report, anyone not having access to citizenship rights is stateless, an admirably bold position for the CoE to take.

I would of course recommend reading through the entire document as it is packed with damning evidence and will be an extremely useful compilation of Roma rights violations in this decade. However I would like to just except this portion from the statelessness section, offering recommendations for tackling the problem.

-Providing free legal aid for proceedings aimed at securing
documentation;
–Waiving fees for civil registration for those in destitution;
– Making it possible to establish personal status through simplified
procedures such as witnesses’ testimonials when no other
evidence can be obtained;
– Strengthening the role of Ombudsperson institutions to solve
these issues;
– Acceding to the 1997 European Convention on Nationality, the
2006 Council of Europe Convention on the avoidance of statelessness
in relation to state succession as well as to the two UN
conventions on statelessness. (Section 7)

I fully agree with these ideas, and it sounds very much like Hammarberg has been listening to the NGO world in framing solutions.

You can find the full report here.

Non-Citizen News Roundup

Dia de los Muertos in Mexico City

Mexico: Maybe its not strictly relevant, but it is timely: Brujas and Brujos in Mexico find themselves in high demand for problems related to drug cartels. Some witches charge for protection from extortion, or use their senses to find a missing kidnapped relative. And its not just victims turning to the craft: some of the wizards and witches report visits by cartel members and police officers as well.
Mexicans turn to witchcraft to ward off drug cartels (via NY Times)

Australia: Sad news this morning as a capsized  boat carrying asylum seekers left at least 8 dead and 10 still missing,. The boat carried some 70 Iranian, Afghan, and Pakistani asylum seekers determined to make the passage from Indonesia to reach Australia's shores. The incident is causing a big rehashing of the Malaysian swap deal. As Immigration Minister Chris Bowen stated, "it is a fact that when you have more boats coming to Australia you will see more deaths." (So it's either flout the 1951 Convention OR death at sea? Is there possibly a third option?)
10 asylum seekers still missing off Java  (via Sydney Morning Herald)
Australia shock at asylum boat tragedy off Indonesia (via BBC)

Croatia: At a meeting in Zagreb on birth and civil registration, the UNHCR urged Southeastern European countries to accede to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Currently, both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzogovina have acceded, but many other nations in the region have not. Among other protection, the 1961 convention provides that a child born in the country who would otherwise be stateless receives the nationality of the birth country. The UNCHR argued this would help the plight of the region's Roma, who currently represent a majority of the stateless and legally invisible. I couldn't agree more.
UNCHR drives effort to reduce statelessness in Southeast Europe (via Alert Net)

Consequences of statelessness/ legal invisibility

The inability to prove your own nationality can be a major obstacle in realizing even the most basic of human rights. For example, in many ex-Yugoslav states, all citizens of a certain age are required to hold a valid state-issued identification card which is necessary for accessing a number of social services. The application for the card requires documents that a stateless or legally invisible person is unlikely to possess, such as birth certificate and proof of citizenship. Without this card or other forms of identification, living a normal life is difficult. In Macedonia, for instance, ARKA writes that Roma without verifiable citizenship or birth certificates are denied access to “education, health services, housing, formal employment, financial services social security, justice, property rights, legal marriage, and participation in the democratic process.”  And of course, without a passport, individuals are also restricted in their freedom of movement.

The problem has significance at systemic levels, as well. The lack of accurate statistics on birth rates can mean insufficient budgetary allocations for school and social welfare systems. Additionally, municipal planning policies for housing and basic amenities such as water may be skewed by a lack of official housing registrations. And when the government doesn’t have accurate information about the population, employment policies also suffer. This is a particular issue for populations who are vulnerable to employment discrimination, as Roma often are.

The repercussions also extend to democracy and public safety. Without identification, a significant portion of the population cannot vote or be elected to public office. Further, they are far more vulnerable to practices such as human trafficking and child prostitution. Without official proof of age they may also be at risk for child labor and early marriage. And more generally, without identification the government at every level cannot keep track of this population, or take precautions to ensure their safety. And, when parents are stateless, they are far more likely to pass this status down to their children, since identification is required to register birth and paternity in many cases.

So in sum, statelessness means being paralyzed- unable to access your rights and improve your life- and, like a communicable disease, you have to watch your children go through the same frustrating process without being able to help.

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Photo via UNHCR.

COE Commish on Statelessness

Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, has an excellent record so far of bringing attention to Europe's bete noir's: the war on terror, Roma, migrants, and now, the problem of statelessness.

In a speech to the CoE during a conference on nationality, Hammarberg highlighted the problem of statelessness throughout Europe, but especially among the Roma.

A great number of stateless persons are Roma. The problem exists in many countries, but it is particularly acute in the Western Balkans, notably in the countries of ex-Yugoslavia. Several thousand persons, among them many Roma, became victims of the decision in Slovenia in 1992 to erase non-Slovene residents from the Register of Permanent Residents. Many had moved to Slovenia from other parts of Yugoslavia before the dissolution of the federation. It was only in 2010 that this unjust regulation was changed through amendments to the law.

In other states in the Balkans, there are Roma who are without citizenship or even basic identity papers. Those who have moved from the former Yugoslav Federation to other parts of Europe often lack personal documents and live in legal uncertainty. They are de facto stateless. Their newborn children are frequently not registered and risk losing their right to apply one day for citizenship as they cannot prove legal residence in the country

Two important things to note about this speech:
1) He mentions the Slovenian "erasure" problem, the subject of the Kuric case currently referred to the Grand Chamber. ( Kuric and others v. Slovenia App. no. 26828/06). Sounds like he endorses the ECtHR's finding of wrong-doing on the part of Slovenia. (Article 8. if you'll recall.)
2.) He brings up the problem of unregistered (or, "legally invisible") people, and their children who do not receive birth registration, and implicitly endorses them as de facto stateless. Interesting stance.

We'll definitely want to keep an eye on Hammarberg, and the CoE to see what steps they take, if any, to back up their stance on statelessness in Europe.