Whose Citizens, What Rights? Roles and Responsibilities in Addressing Displacement and Forced Migration in Haiti

Abstract

Over the past 10 years, a new impetus in addressing statelessness and protecting the stateless population led to stronger state commitments, and improved mechanisms at the national and international levels, to address/eliminate statelessness. The most recent such development is embodied by the 10-year UNHCR’s Global Action Plan to End Statelessness. Yet, the Dominican Republic (DR) is a stark exception from this rule. Although the tension between the DR and Haiti is not new, in 2010, and respectively, 2013, the DR’s shift in legal requirements for citizenship and nationality sharply increased statelessness, adding an estimated 210,000 people to the stateless population. The legal decisions leading to this situation contributed to statelessness and displacement—with thousands of Haitian people in the DR migrating back to Haiti in 2015 and 2016. This paper presents the context of legal and political constraints affecting the situation of displaced Haitians, and the findings of an initial assessment conducted in 2015 of the stateless living situations in two of the camps set at the southern border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. We particularly focus our analysis on migrants’ perception of government and international organizations, their expectations and claims to protection and support, and the elements contributing to either helplessness or resilience. The findings of this study indicate that participants had minimum support and lacked housing, food security, access to latrines, and water sources. A large number of participants reported significant level of trauma and very low levels of trust in any of the official stakeholders involved in the migration and relocation processes.