UN agency urges Dominican govt. refrain deporting stateless people

Santo Domingo.- The Dominican Republic must ensure that people whose citizenship was thrown into question by a 2013 ruling of the Constitutional Court will not be deported, the UN refugee agency said yesterday, as reported by bignewsnetwork.com.

"The Court’s ruling and the subsequent regularization plan which gave individuals born in the Dominican Republic until mid-June to regularize their status, impacts tens of thousands of people," explained an Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson, Adrian Edwards, during a press conference in Geneva.

According to the outlet, Edwards added that most of them were born in the Dominican Republic and are of Haitian descent. "With a stateless population in the Dominican Republic estimated at more than 200,000 people, the consequences of expulsion could be devastating," he warned.

Bignewsnetwork.com said the UNHCR is concerned about the human rights considerations for people who may be expelled and end up being pushed into Haiti, even though they are not considered as citizens of that country. "This would have serious repercussions for all who are affected and be a serious setback to efforts worldwide to end the problem of statelessness."