HAVE YOUR SAY-What does it mean to be stateless?

This blog is part of an AlertNet special multimedia report on statelessness

Albert Einstein was one. So was Nobel prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. And so are up to 15 million others worldwide – people living without nationality, without passports, without rights.

Einstein and Solzenitsyn were only stateless for a time. Millions of less famous people who on paper don’t exist can look forward to entire lives barred from education, healthcare, credit, overseas travel and formal employment.

Cello supremo Mstislav Rosropovich, who was stripped of his Soviet citizenship in 1978 for political reasons, poignantly described his feelings when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, ending his period of “obliteration”.

“There, in front of that wall as it lost its stones, I suddenly regained my lost citizenship,” he said in an interview some years later, as quoted in the U.N. refugee agency’s Excluded magazine.

“Those who have been deprived of their identity understand what I had to put up with – the sheer pain, the most intimate of wounds. That moment lit up my whole life. It wiped away 15 years of disgrace and humiliation.”

In a special multimedia report, AlertNet looks in depth at the causes and consequences of statelessness, a condition one person we spoke to described as being “between the earth and the sky”.

Be part of the discussion. What is the human toll of statelessness? What is its psychological impact? What does it mean to live life in a legal limbo?

If you are stateless yourself, we’d especially like to hear from you.

But even if you aren’t, we invite you to take part in a collective thought exercise.

Imagine your life without a birth certificate, passport or any form of identification. What basic rights and opportunities would be denied to you? What could you no longer take for granted? How would you feel if forced to live between earth and the sky?

Please leave a comment below.

Following is a list with all links related to the report.

MULTIMEDIA

VIDEO: Who is stateless? – Emma Batha and Alex Whiting, AlertNet

VIDEO: What is statelessness? – Aubrey Wade/Open Society Foundations

VIDEO: Stateless Nubians - Katy Migiro, AlertNet

VIDEO: Stateless Rohingyas - AlertNet

VIDEO: Stateless children in Sabah –Thin Lei Win, AlertNet

VIDEO: Stateless Dominicans – Jon Anderson, Open Society Foundations

GRAPHIC: Stateless people worldwide - Reuters

STORIES   

Invisible millions pay price of statelessness - Emma Batha, AlertNet       

Bedouns suffer uncertain fate in Kuwait - Emma Batha, AlertNet

Colonialism renders Nubians stateless in Kenya - Katy Migiro, AlertNet

Millions of Nepal children risk statelessness - Nita Bhalla, AlertNet

Citizenship worries compromise Ivory Coast stability - George Fominyen, AlertNet

Sabah’s stateless children seek official status -  AlertNet

Roma must get citizenship, says Europe rights chief  -  Megan Rowling, AlertNet     

EXPERT VIEWS – Did statelessness fuel the conflict in Congo? - George Fominyen, AlertNet

Brazil bill gives hope to Latin America’s stateless – Anastasia Moloney, AlertNet

FACTBOXES AND RESOURCES

FACTBOX: Stateless groups around the world - Emma Batha, AlertNet    

FACTBOX: How countries have tackled statelessness - Astrid Zweynert, AlertNet

LINKS: The world's most invisible people? - AlertNet

BLOGS

HAVE YOUR SAY: What does it mean to be stateless? - Tim Large, AlertNet

How DNA is helping young Thais get citizenship – Plan International  

‘Drowning nations’ threaten new 21st Century statelessness –  Maxine Burkett, ICAP

No rights for stateless Rohingya fleeing Burma - Refugees International    

COMING NEXT

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