Abstract
In this increasingly globalized world, with hundreds of millions of people living outside the country of their birth, and States guarding their sovereign right to control membership ever more closely, the number of children without secure citizenship status is on the rise. This article is a case study of non-citizen children in the Bahamas, focusing specifically on children born of Haitian parents without status, “Arendt’s children”. It examines how the Bahamas, a State party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), fails to consider adequately the best interests of the Bahamian-born non-citizen child in its laws and policies. It analyses how the Bahamas’ ratification of relevant human rights treaties translates into practice at the domestic level and concludes with an examination of ways in which Arendt’s children might be integrated into the Bahamian polity.
Highlights
In this increasingly globalized world, with hundreds of millions of people living outside the country of their birth, and States guarding their sovereign right to control membership ever more closely, the number of children without secure citizenship status is on the rise
Some contest the importance of citizenship in this post-national era (Benhabib, 2004; Ong, 2006; Sassen, 2003; Soysal, 1998), the enjoyment of basic rights is often very difficult to achieve unless one is a citizen of somewhere
Bhabha argues that Arendt’s children: do not have a country to call their own because they are either noncitizens or children of noncitizens ... citizen or migrant children living in so-called ‘mixed status’ or ‘undocumented’ families, and unregistered or stateless children living in the country of their birth with their immigrant parents (p. 413)
Summary
On are often routinely violated. During the summer of 2009, the author went to Nassau, The Bahamas, to investigate the question of statelessness. Laws may discriminate or afford “different treatment to different person[s] attributable wholly or mainly to their respective descriptions by race, place of origin, political opinions[,] colour or creed” (Article 26.3) when it is “reasonably required” for matters of public safety, order, health and morality, and for the defense of the country (Articles 21.2.a, 22.5, 23.2, 24.2 and 25.2.a) Since these provisions provide numerous potential grounds for restricting the human rights of noncitizens in the areas of speech, assembly, privacy and others, The Bahamas, a State party to ICERD since 1975, ought to consider laying out its official position on discrimination. This Article asserts that “States parties shall grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children.” Of the 186 States party to CEDAW, The Bahamas, along with Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, North and South Korea, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates, refuse to be bound by Article 9, paragraph 2 of the convention and allow for discrimination against women when it comes to passing on citizenship (United Nations, 2010, Ch. 4-8, p. 4)
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