Newsletter | June 2023
Welcome to the June 2023 newsletter from the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. We are pleased to once again share with you our current activities, publications and opportunities, as well as relevant news and developments across the world.
Staffing News
Last month we were excited to welcome two new members to the team - Philippa Duell-Piening as a Research Fellow and Dr Marika Sosnowski as a Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow.
Philippa is working on the ARC-funded Understanding Statelessness in Australia project, providing secretariat support to the project’s international advisory group and conducting qualitative research. Philippa's recently submitted PhD focuses on rights realisation for people with disability in refugee contexts. Philippa has previously worked at the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture coordinating the Victorian Refugee Health Network; in the forced-migration contexts of Timor-Leste (2002) and on the Thai-Myanmar border (2012). Philippa has published about refugee and disability rights in a wide range of journals.
Marika is an admitted lawyer and associate researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Hamburg. Her primary research interests are in the fields of critical security studies, complex political order, local/rebel governance and legal systems, with a particular focus on the Syrian civil war. Last week, the Centre was pleased to host the launch of Marika's book Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria, described in further detail below.
L-R Philippa Duell-Piening & Marika Sosnowski
Visiting Fellowships 2024
We are pleased to have opened applications for our Visiting Fellowship program for 2024. The Centre offers Visiting Fellowships for up to two months. Visiting scholars are provided with a workspace, computer and library access. They are encouraged to give a short work-in-progress seminar and to participate in the academic life and work of the Centre including events and workshops.
The Centre acknowledges the diversity of individuals doing research or working on statelessness around the globe. Applications are invited from researchers ranging from PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to tenured academics. Applications from non-academic visiting professionals will also be considered, if they propose an applied research project of relevance to the work of the centre. Researchers with lived experience of statelessness are encouraged to apply.
Application Deadline: 1 August 2023
Stateless Legal Clinic
The Stateless Legal Clinic has enjoyed another busy period over the past few months. In addition to undertaking its important client work, the Clinic has hosted several wonderful visitors who have shared their stories and experience with the students.
Last month we were thrilled to have Clinic Ambassador Fadi Chalouhy spend a day with the students to share his personal story of living stateless and inspiring journey of resilience. We also enjoyed having Jana Favero from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) visit the clinic to speak about her amazing career and her ‘passion for change’. Students also spent time with Eddie Cubillo and Jaynaya Dwyer of Melbourne Law School’s Indigenous Law and Justice Hub as well as with Arti Chetty, Pro Bono Special Counsel at Russel Kennedy Lawyers, and with Rebecca Webb of Refugee Legal, both of whom discussed the importance of people-focused lawyering.
The SLC is so grateful to these wonderful people from affiliated organisations whose input contributes greatly to student learning and enrichment in the Clinic.
Top row L-R: Students and Director Katie Robertson with Fadi Chalouhy; Students and Katie Robertson with Jana Favero; Students with Rebecca Webb. Bottom row L-R: Students with Arti Chetty; Students and Katie Robertson with Eddie Cubillo and Jaynaya Dwyer.
Clinic Director Katie Robertson and students have also been on the road visiting clients in Adelaide (SA), Newcastle (NSW), Sydney (NSW) and Dandenong (Victoria). Thank you to our partners at the Refugee Advice Casework Service for hosting us in Sydney, and supporters Maurice Blackburn for kindly providing an office space in Dandenong.
Importantly, the students have been busily collating and submitting applications for citizenship on behalf of our child clients, which, when granted, will make a life-changing difference to these children and their families, helping to end intergenerational statelessness in Australia.
A big thank you for the ongoing support of the Cameron Foundation which makes this work possible.
Students on the road as part of their work for the clinic.
It was wonderful to watch Stateless Legal Clinic student Thenu Herath on the ABC's Q&A program on Monday evening. A human rights advocate and Melbourne Law School JD student, Thenu spoke with such confidence and thoughtfulness about how current issues are affecting young people in Australia. Watch the episode on ABC iview.
The Ethics of Care in Nepali Citizenship-Equality Activism
TUES 27 JUNE, 5PM-6PM | WEBINAR
Deirdre Brennan presents as part of the Refugees, Citizenship & Statelessness: Asia In Focus Seminar Series
PhD Completion Seminar
Abstract: In the “end statelessness” discourse, both the search for solutions to statelessness, and the framing of statelessness successes, are dominated by a rights-based approach. While important, this approach prioritises engagement with international human rights law, overlooking, I argue, the pervasive social role of care in statelessness solutions. To understand care’s presence in “ending statelessness”, I present my analysis of activists' experiences campaigning for equal nationality laws in Nepal. As this presentation reveals, there is an undervaluation of an intricate web of care, emotions, and community amongst activists which sustains and reproduces the ‘labour power’ required of campaigning, be it local or global.
Chair: Professor Shaun McVeigh
Supervisors: Professor Michelle Foster; Professor Susan Kneebone; Associate Professor Ana Dragojlovic
Academic Assessor: Professor Jenny Morgan
Deirdre Brennan (BSc University College Cork and MA Utrecht University) is a PhD candidate at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Deirdre’s first encounter with statelessness was in 2011, through her interactions with friends affected by the issue in Mae Sai, Thailand. She was struck by the sense of claustrophobia imposed on young people when their right to travel, work or receive an education was restricted by their stateless status. Since then, Deirdre has sought to communicate the impacts of statelessness and the lived experiences of those affected by statelessness. Prior to joining the Centre Deirdre has worked in a variety of research roles in this field, including the Statelessness Programme’s 2014 Thailand Project on the nexus between statelessness and human trafficking, the 2015 Equal Rights Trust publication on gender discrimination in nationality laws, and most recently as a research fellow with the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion where she co-authored a children’s book on childhood statelessness. Deirdre's research interests concern the intersections between feminism, statelessness and activism, stemming from her personal connection to the transformative work of pro-choice activists in Ireland.
Recent 'Asia in Focus' webinars
On 1 June, we were delighted to have PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow at the Melbourne Law School Saika Sabir present as part of our 'Refugees, Citizenship & Statelessness: Asia in Focus' webinar series. Saika's presentation Citizens and Migrants in Assam: Law, Bureaucracy and Indirect Discrimination against Women, discussed the ways India's citizenship laws, policies and practices indirectly discriminate against women, in the context of the citizenship determination process in the State of Assam, India.
In May, Ashraful Azad (Adjunct Lecturer, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW) gave his presentation Registration without recognition: implications of biometric registration on stateless refugees. Taking as a case study the biometric registration of stateless Rohingya refugees by the UNHCR in Bangladesh, the presentation highlighted how while biometric registration has improved population statistics, reduced duplication, and provided refugees with a unique identity, it has also generated serious negative impacts on the lives of stateless people themselves.
Many thanks to Ashraful and Saika and to a wonderful, engaged audience on both occasions.
Recently on the Critical Statelessness Studies Blog
Ensuing Statelessness as (Post) Colonial Effect: Dynamics of Formal Identification Denial among the Fulani in Ghana
by Isaac Owusu Nsiah
In this blog, Isaac Owusu Nsiah critically discusses the dynamics of the Ghanaian state's recognition of the Fulani community as migrants and thus non-Ghanaians. He considers how such categorizations are institutionalised in citizen-identifying institutions, translating into widespread exclusions and discriminatory realities in accessing National IDs and citizenship. Focusing on the work of the National ID in socially sorting, classifying, and categorising differentiated citizenship. Nsiah ultimately contends that Indigeneity as a colonial construct is integral to the regimes and infrastructure of (modern) Ghanaian citizenship.
Risks of Stigmatising Stateless People through Association and Conflation: Noxious Nexuses with Gender Based Violence and Terrorism
by Deirdre Brennan & Thomas McGee
Over the last decade, the term “nexus” has become something of a buzz word within the emerging field of Statelessness Studies. Research has often framed statelessness in relation to its intersection with other issues, such as discrimination, migration, (forced) displacement, human trafficking, child marriage, sustainable development etc. This is perhaps partly an outcome of statelessness being a poorly understood and niche subject, whereby connecting it with other larger fields of interest is a route to engaging a greater number of allied stakeholders (outside the small mainstream of specialists dedicated to work in the statelessness sector).
Focus on the intersections between statelessness and other issues is not in itself problematic. Indeed, it is important to unpack the connections, and question how statelessness is experienced by different people in different circumstances. Considering intersecting forms of marginalisation and/or identity may also present more nuanced understandings of statelessness as both a legal and lived phenomenon. However, having each focused on a particular statelessness “nexus” in our own work (discussed further below), we have come to reflect on, and develop concerns about, the assumptions that can lie beneath the neat framing of a “statelessness nexus”.
In this blog, Brennan and McGee discuss a number of concerns for stateless people when certain associations are privileged within academia or NGO advocacy work. These include correlations made between stateless people and risks to human trafficking, lack of access to education, COVID-19, gender-based violence, and terrorism.
Legal Identity under Insurgencies and Unrecognised States Workshop
On 13 and 14 April, Dr Marika Sosnowski (Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow) and Dr Bart Klem (Gothenburg University) organised and hosted a workshop at the GIGA in Hamburg for 13 contributors to a special issue on “legal identity under insurgencies and unrecognised states” that will be published with Citizenship Studies in March 2024. Peter McMullin Centre PhD candidates, Andrea Immanuel's article focuses on legal identity and the right to self-determination in the case of Western Sahara and Thomas McGee's piece is about cooperation and competition, in terms of legal identity documentation, between the Kurdish Autonomous Administration and the Syrian regime. For a preview of some of the other great research being done as part of the special issue (such as on death certificates issued by non-state actors; on tax receipts in Nagaland; and, the citizenship conundrums of Syrians in Abkhazia) you can check out the blog symposium at Armed Groups and International Law. The workshop and special issue are part of a larger project on the same topic being supported by funding from the Swedish Research Council.
L-R Thomas McGee, Andrea Immanuel and Marika Sosnowski at the workshop.
Administrative Appeals Tribunal reform consultation
The Australian Government has announced that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal will be abolished and replaced with a new federal administrative review body. Professor Michelle Foster participated in a consultation last month as part of this reform, which is designed to ensure the efficiency, accessibility and integrity of Australia’s system of administrative review. Read more about the new system of federal administrative review.
Global Alliance Taskforce Meeting
During the week of 22 May, Professor Michelle Foster attended a meeting of the UNHCR's Global Alliance Taskforce, a group composed of stateless and formerly stateless people, representatives from civil society organisations, academic institutions, faith-based organisations, UN and other international entities, which has been established to jointly develop the foundational elements of the Global Alliance to End Statelessness. The group has been meeting online since October last year, working on the development of the Alliance's vision and mission; its governance structure; its strategy and a workplan.
Members of the Global Alliance Taskforce which met in London in May.
Launch of "Cruel Care: A History of Children at our Borders"
On 11 May, we celebrated the launch of our Senior Research Fellow Dr Jordana Silverstein's book "Cruel Care: A History of Children at our Borders" at Brunswick Bound Bookshop. Professor Michelle Foster officially launched the book, followed by a speech by writer and historian Joan Nestle. The Centre was delighted to host this wonderful event alongside Monash University Press. A warm congratulations to Jordy, whose book has been described as a 'ground-breaking examination of Australia’s treatment of child refugees.'
Jordana 's book had a further two launches - first in Canberra (14 June) and then Sydney (15 June). Huge congratulations to Jordana!
L-R Joan Nestle, Jordana Silverstein & Michelle Foster at the launch.
Launch - "Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria"
On Thursday 8 June, we were pleased to host the launch of Dr Marika Sosnowski's book, "Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria." The event was a great success, featuring wonderful presentations by Prof Sarah Phillips (Professor of Global Conflict and Development, University of Sydney) and Rifaie Tammas (Syrian activist and PhD candidate at Macquarie University). Dr Marnie Lloyd (Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Victorian University of Wellington) conducted a Q&A with Dr Marika Sosnowski, and the book was officially launched by Prof Michelle Foster (Director, Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness). Congratulations to Marika on her wonderful book!
ABOVE: Dr Marnie Lloyd in conversation with Dr Marika Sosnowski.
ABOVE: Dr Marnie Lloyd in conversation with Dr Marika Sosnowski and audience.
Statelessness & Citizenship Review (SCR)
Volume 5 (1) of the Statelessness & Citizenship Review is currently in the production phase and will be published in mid-July. Volume 5(2), our Early Career Researcher Special Issue, will be published in December 2023.
Submissions for Volume 6 Issue 1 of the Statelessness & Citizenship Review are currently open, with a submissions deadline of 1 October 2023.
Statelessness & Citizenship Reading Group
The next Statelessness & Citizenship Reading Group will be held on Wednesday 28 June. This is the final for the semester and the group will restart in August with the dates for the rest of 2023 as follows:
23 August
20 September
18 October
22 November
For further information please contact Andrea Immanuel via: aimmanuel@student.unimelb.edu.au.
Peter McMullin Centre staff publications
Addressing statelessness in the MENA region: a new network for mobilisation, Thomas McGee and Zahra Albarazi, Forced Migration Review - Mobilising for rights in the Mena region, April 2023
Peter McMullin Centre staff presentations
29 May - Dr Jordana Silverstein presented on ‘Refugee children: Why is Australia so cruel?’ at the Refugee Action Collective.
19 May - Dr Jordana Silverstein presented 'The Emotions of Statelessness and Citizenship,' at the Questions of national (be)longing - citizenship symposium, ANU, 19 May 2023.
13-14 April - Andrea Immanuel presented her paper 'Unrecognised Documents and the Right to Nationality: The Case of Western Sahara'; and Thomas McGee presented on cooperation and competition in terms of legal identity documentation, between the Kurdish Autonomous Administration and the Syrian regime, at the Legal Identity under Insurgencies and Unrecognised States Workshop, German Institute for Global and Area Studies.
Recent media and commentary
'Dismantling the myth that "stopping the boats" is in children's best interests,' (Extract from Cruel Care), Jordana Silverstein, Crikey, 9 June 2023
Jordana Silverstein - interview on Thursday Breakfast, 3CR, 15 May 2023
‘We’d be getting it from both sides, which was horrendous’: Australian political players on our brutal refugee policies, Jordana Silverstein, The Conversation, 3 May 2023
Academic updates
- AlKhatrash, Noor. "Examining the Cinematic Representation of Kuwait’s Bidoon: A Look at Sharq and Ka3bool." PhD diss., 2023.
- Armstrong, Charlotte. "Legal Briefing: Statelessness and the prohibition on discrimination against Romani." (2023).
- Bacchus, Maria. "The Illusion of Citizenship and Sovereignty in the Caribbean." Caribbean Quilt 7, no. 1 (2023): 30-34.
- Barrios Aquino, Marianela. "Elusive citizenship: European citizens' experiences of naturalisation in Britain after Brexit." PhD diss., University of Sussex, 2023.
- Benson, Michaela, and Manuela Boatcă. "Global Social Inequalities and the Coloniality of Citizenship, Past and Present: A Conversation Between Manuela Boatcă and Michaela Benson." Migration and Society 6, no. 1 (2023): 150-158.
- Chen, Albert HY. "The Evolution of Modern Chinese Nationality Law." China Review 23, no. 2 (2023): 123-147.
- Christopher, Giwa David. "A Critical Analysis of the Legal and Institutional Framework for Protecting the Rights of the Child in Nigeria." (2023).
- Dahrouge, Elias. "The Syrian Refugee Crisis and the Lebanese State Identity—The Impact of the Syrian Refugee Crisis on the Lebanese State Identity Through Discourse and Actions (2005-2020)[védés előtt]." PhD diss., Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem, 2023.
- Dalle Mulle, Emmanuel, Davide Rodogno, and Mona Bieling, eds. Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Quest for Homogeneity in Interwar Europe. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.
- da Silva, Jacqueline Carvalho. "New Pact on Migration and Asylum and the rapid identification of vulnerable profiles: notes on challenges from the Spanish coasts."
- Farahani, Hadi, Maliheh Nekouei Marvi Langari, Laleh Golamrej Eliasi, Mohamed Tavakol, and Timo Toikko. "“How Can I Trust People When They Know Exactly What My Weakness Is?” Daily Life Experiences, and Resilience Strategies of Stateless Afghans in Iran." Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies (2023): 1-16.
- Hainmueller, Jens, et al. "Does access to citizenship confer socio-economic returns? Evidence from a randomized control design." (2023).
- Hammoudeh, Doaa. "On the margins but not of the state: young Jerusalemites' navigating citizenship and welfare in a settler-colonial context." PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2023.
- Haque, Md Mahbubul, Zarina Othman, and Bakri Bin Mat. "Rohingya refugees and their right to work in Malaysia." Asian Affairs: An American Review 50, no. 2 (2023): 95-119.
- Harbers, Imke, and Abbey Steele. "Permanent Membership: The Prohibition of Citizenship Renunciation." International Migration Review (2023).
- Hulmequist, Rumyana. "Damned if They Go, Demand if They Stay: The Compounding Effect of Selective Misidentification, Marginalization, and Nation-State Politics on the ‘Intractability’ of Romani Statelessness." Master’s diss. The University of Minnesota (2023).
- Immanuel, Andrea Marilyn Pragashini. "Daniela L. Caglioti, War and Citizenship: Enemy Aliens and National Belonging from the French Revolution to the First World War." Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies 14, no. 1 (2023): 183-188.[1]
- Khwaja, Afifa. "A human right to political membership & the right to territory." Journal of International Political Theory (2023): 17550882231169489.
- Rahmadan, Yanuar. "The Discourse-Historical Approach: The Comparison of The Statelessness Identity in Germany and Latvia." Global Insight Journal 8, no. 1 (2023).
- Riaz, Ayesha. "Increasing the powers of the secretary of state for the Home Department to strip individuals of their British citizenship." Modern Law Review (2023).
- Saikia, Papari. "Alien at birth: Chinese migrants in post-colonial Assam (1947-1962)." Contemporary South Asia (2023): 1-14.
- Surak, Kristin. The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires. Harvard University Press, 2023.
- Van Hout, M. C., and J. Wessels. "“# ForeignersMustGo versus ‘in favorem libertatis’”: Human rights violations and procedural irregularities in South African immigration detention law." Journal of Human Rights.
- Wing, Adrien K., and Hisham A. Kassim, eds. Family Law and Gender in the Middle East and North Africa: Change and Stasis since the Arab Spring. Cambridge University Press, 2023.
- Yap, Chin-chin. "Flying While Palestinian: A Critical Analysis of Palestinian Aviation Diplomacy." Journal of Palestine Studies (2023): 1-21.
Recent global news and developments
UNHCR Global Trends Report 2022
The recently released UNHCR Global Trends Report 2022 shows the number of forcibly displaced people (108.4 million) at the highest rate in over 30 years, and with the largest annual increase in this figure since the UNHCR began tracking these statistics. The data shows that at end-2022 there are 4.4 million stateless people residing in 95 countries. Of these, 2.4 million stateless people are in Asia and the Pacific. In Australia, the government reported 8,314 stateless people. The report notes the following: "Stateless figures in Australia are sourced from the Government. They consist of figures on stateless persons held in detention and those that have been issued or are in an application process for an “Onshore Humanitarian Visa” and have self-reported to be stateless. Australia does not have a separate statelessness status determination procedure and only provides statistics on humanitarian visas. Due to this, the figure reported here does not capture all stateless persons in Australia and is not an estimate of statelessness in Australia. Figures for stateless persons in detention come from the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs and Australian Border Force report on Immigration Detention and Community Statistics Summary 31 January 2022."
The Global Summit on Gender Equality in Nationality Laws was held on 13 June in Geneva, calling for action to end gender-based discrimination in nationality laws that deny people the equal right to acquire and confer nationality on their children and spouses. The summit was convened by the UNHCR's Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, UNICEF, and UN Women, and was opened by UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, who said that a solution for statelessness due to gender discriminatory nationality laws is "within our grasp."
Australia
The Department of Home Affairs has asked the Federal government to consider extending supports for asylum seekers and people on bridging visas to respond to the housing and cost-of-living crises and the complex needs of more people exiting immigration detention. In the brief, dated October 2022, Immigration minister Andrew Giles directed the streamlining of review processes for cohorts including detainees assessed as a low risk to the community, to who Australia owes a protection obligation, who are stateless, have complex health or care needs, or have been in immigration detention for five or more years.
Stateless man, Said Imasi was released from Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre on 9 May 2023. Imasi has spent a total of 13 years in Australian detention centres, the longest detainment of a stateless person in Australian history. It is understood that Immigration Minister Andrew Giles personally intervened in this case to free Imasi, however it is unknown how long he will be able to stay in Australia, whether he can work and whether he will be able to apply for a long-term visa.
Kyrgyzstan
A new law in Kyrgyzstan, coming into effect on 24 June, will ensure that all children born in the country will be registered at birth, regardless of whether their parents are undocumented or stateless. The UNHCR has welcomed the move, which is the latest in a series of positive measures taken by the country to prevent and resolve statelessness. The new law will also see birth certificates issued to children who previously could not be registered due to their parents' undocumented or stateless status. It is estimated that that the children of at least 5,000 families stand to benefit from this decision.
Rohingya
Myanmar’s military-led initiative to repatriate Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh has drawn skepticism and criticism from human rights campaigners. The pilot project, aimed at repatriating about 1,000 Rohingya refugees, has been labeled a mere PR campaign. Concerns over the transparency of the verification process and the absence of guarantees for the Rohingya’s safety and citizenship rights have cast doubts on the initiative.
South Africa
According to the latest UNICEF figures, more than 642,000 children are living in South Africa as migrants or displaced persons, among them numerous stateless minors. The issue was recently discussed by the Working Group on Migration and Human Trafficking of the Justice, Peace and Development Commission of the Symposium of the Bishops' Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM). Archbishop Joseph Buti Tlhagale, a leading South African Catholic bishop has pledged that the Catholic Church will continue to assist stateless children.
Sudan
The UNHCR has advised that people fleeing the conflict in Sudan, as well as Sudanese nationals who are outside the country and cannot return because of the conflict, may be in need of international refugee protection under international and regional legal frameworks. Following the onset of conflict in April, UNHCR urges all countries to allow civilians fleeing Sudan, including stateless people, non-discriminatory access to their territories.
Recent news articles relating to statelessness
Australia
Stateless man detained on Christmas Island hopes for ministerial intervention, SBS News, 20 June
Borneo
Bajau: The Vanishing Seafarers of Southeast Asia, The Diplomat, 8 June
Ireland
UNHCR calls for new procedure for recognising stateless persons in Ireland, Hotpress, 23 May
Malaysia
NGO celebrates 25 years of teaching migrant, stateless children, The Star, 9 June
Sabah embarks on digitalising data to solve issue of illegal immigrants, stateless people, The Star, 2 June
'Best gift' for 21st birthday: High Court declares Johor-born stateless woman a Malaysian, MalayMail, 12 May
Nepal
Sexism and Statelessness, Project Syndicate, 12 June 2023
Russia
'I Want To Return Before My 75th Birthday': The Armenian-Russian Cellist Banned From Russia For 50 Years Over Brother's Anti-War Activism, Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, 4 June
Thailand
Overcoming statelessness in Thailand, Bangkok Post, 5 June
United Kingdom
'I've lived in the UK all my life but I can't get a passport - now I've been left stateless', My London, 29 May
