Knowing that you belong somewhere is a luxury eluding 10-million people
Geneva — An estimated 10-million people worldwide are stateless, including three-million officially, a status that deprives them of an identity, rights and often jobs, the UN refugee agency said on Friday. Muslim Rohingya in Buddhist-majority Myanmar form the world’s biggest stateless minority, with about 600,000 having fled violence and repression since late August and taken refuge in Bangladesh, it said. In a report, This is Our Home — Stateless Minorities and Their Search for Citizenship, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called on governments to end the discriminatory practice by 2024. "If you live in this world without a nationality, you are without an identity, you are without documentation, without the rights and entitlements that we take for granted … having a job, having education, knowing that your child belongs somewhere," Carol Batchelor, director of UNHCR’s division of international protection, told a news briefing. UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said 3.2-mi...
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