The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday condemned the Dominican Constitutional Court ruling which refuses nationality to offspring born in the island country of undocumented parents, which mostly affects descendants of Haitians.
“This decision deprives tens of thousands of people of a nationality, which will have a very negative impact on the rest of their fundamental rights,” warned spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani in Geneva today.
On September 26 the high Court ruled that offspring born in the Dominican Republic since 1929, to undocumented immigrants who were registered as Dominican citizens, will lose that status, by establishing that their parents were in the country “in transit.”
The principle of “automatic citizenship” for all those born on Dominican soil had prevailed until 2010, tut the new Constitution, approved that year, stipulates that citizenship was only guaranteed in the case of births within the country provided that at least one of the parents was either already Dominican of a legal permanent resident.
This decision, which can not be appealed, gives the Central Electoral Board a term of one year to draw up a list of people who meet those requirements, to request the nationality.
“The decision will have disastrous implications for the descendants of Haitians, who’ll sail along a constitutional limbo.”
