Reflections from the Statelessness Encyclopedia Asia Pacific (SEAP) Project

Описание: On 18 April 2024, The Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at Melbourne Law School hosted a webinar presented by Subin Mulmi, Visiting Fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. This webinar was part of the Refugees, Citizenship & Statelessness: Asia in Focus Seminar Series.

Subin presented a webinar titled ‘Statelessness in the Asia Pacific - Reflections from the Statelessness Encyclopedia Asia Pacific (SEAP) project’. The Asia Pacific hosts the largest population of stateless individuals in the world even though 21 out of 45 countries in the region either did not report to UNHCR or reported zero stateless persons in 2022. The vast majority of the stateless population in the Asia Pacific is within South and Southeast Asia. The sub-regions include three of the five largest stateless populations, with Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand combined reporting over 2.1 million stateless people in 2022. One of the reasons behind the large number of statelessness in the region is jus sanguinis structure of the citizenship laws and the exclusion of ethnic minorities due to discriminatory application of nationality laws. Additionally, of the reported stateless population in the Asia Pacific, over 1 million are stateless refugees with most of them represented by the Rohingya community. Few countries provide legal safeguards against childhood statelessness with 14 countries providing no explicit protection for foundlings to acquire citizenship. The fact that only five countries have become parties to the 1961 Statelessness Convention is a strong indication of the statelessness situation in the region. Finally, the scale of resources available to organizations working to prevent and end statelessness is not proportionate to the scale of the problem. In this webinar, Subin shared the SEAP report's high-level findings and his reflections on working on this project.