By Reginald Dumas
Reginald Dumas received his academic education at the Chaguanas Government School, Queen’s Royal College, Cambridge University, and the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales (Graduate Institute of International Studies), Geneva, Switzerland. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from The University of the West Indies. He was one of the first group of diplomats in the Trinidad and Tobago Foreign Service in 1962, serving Trinidad and Tobago in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and North America. He left the Foreign Service in 1988 as Ambassador to Washington and Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States to become Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and Head of this country’s Public Service. He has also represented CARICOM. He is the co-founder of the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute. In 2004 the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, appointed him as his Special Adviser on Haiti. His Haiti experience led him to establish the Medianet Haiti Relief Fund, of which he is the Chairman. He is a frequent commentator on current affairs and has published two books: In the service of the public (1995) and An encounter with Haiti: Notes of a Special Adviser (2008).
This week’s column was serialised and first appeared in the Trinidad Express in July 2014.
On September 23 last year the Dominican Republic (DR) Constitutional Court ruled, to quote the Open Society Justice Initiative, that “the provision of citizenship in the 1929 DR Constitution, which recognises as a citizen anyone born in the country, should not apply to the children of parents who were not ‘legal residents’ at the time of their birth, on the basis that their parents were ‘in transit’.”
The Court’s decision was taken to mean that a few hundred thousand persons, born in the DR and nearly all of Haitian origin, had suddenly been rendered stateless; they were now “in transit”, citizens of neither the DR nor Haiti. The Court disregarded the fact that eight years previously, in 2005, the Inter-American Human Rights Court had rejected the DR government’s attempt to re-define and expand the interpretation of the phrase – how could you be “in transit” through a country where you were born and had lived all your life, in some cases perhaps since 1929? The Court also managed not to notice that decisions of the Inter-American Court are binding on the DR. What good is national sovereignty, after all, if you cannot ignore your international obligations? Perhaps we should ask Shanique Myrie to do a thesis on the subject.
The Court ordered the government to initiate a process to implement its decision. As part of that process, the government adopted a “National Regularization Plan” to “regularize” the status of all undocumented foreigners living in the country.
Regional and international reaction to the Court’s decision was overwhelmingly negative. CARICOM, after a stuttering start which caused much embarrassment, finally found its tongue on November 26 – two whole months after the judgment! – when its Bureau issued a strong statement of condemnation. A little more than three weeks later, our Prime Minister, in her capacity as CARICOM Chairman, called on the DR President, Danilo Medina, “to take steps to restore immediately Dominican nationality to those who have been denationalised.” Medina paid no attention to either her or CARICOM.
Internationally, criticism was voiced by, among others, the UN Human Rights Commission, the UN High Commission for Refugees, Amnesty International, and UNICEF. All stressed the violation of human rights inherent in the judgment. According to the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, the judgment “(violated) international human rights law (by) retroactively (modifying) the constitutional norm in effect from 1929 to 2010 that determined birthright access to (DR) citizenship…” (There was a constitutional amendment in 2010.)
For its part, the DR government stood firm against all these “interfering” foreigners. For instance, a December 2013 report by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission stressed that “persons entitled to citizenship, such as those denationalized under (the judgment) (my emphasis), (should not be obliged) to be registered as foreigners for recognition of their rights…” Medina waved aside this and other findings in the report as “subjective, partial and unilateral.”
The government protested that it was merely seeking “to put its house in order…” No racism whatsoever was involved, and in any case all the talk about hundreds of thousands of people being adversely affected was tommyrot and twaddle: only 24,392 persons in the entire country had not been properly registered. As for CARICOM, it was a maker of “noise and smoke”, and was absurdly threatening to haul the DR before it to be “penalised”.
Strongly supporting the government was the Cardinal of Santo Domingo, Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez, who deemed the Constitutional Court ruling “just”, and added: “No one is above the Court. Nobody. Not even the Catholic Church.” So now we know: at least in the DR, the Roman Catholic Church is subject to man’s law, not God’s. Pope Francis can put that in his pipe and smoke it. He should just make sure no videographer is present.
The DR government promised new legislation on the matter for February 27. The legislation finally came in May, passed rapidly through the Congress, and was signed into law by Medina on May 23, eight months to the day after the Constitutional Court judgment.
The new DR “naturalisation” law declares in Article I that its aim “is to establish (a) a special status for the benefit of children of foreign fathers and mothers, who are not residents, born in the national territory during the period included between 16 June 1929 and 18 April 2007, registered in the Dominican Civil Registry on the basis of documents that are not recognized by regulations in force regarding this area at the time of registration; and (b) the registration of children of foreign parents, who are in an irregular situation, born in the Dominican Republic and who are not registered in the Civil Registry.”
Article 6 reads: “Any child of foreign parents in an irregular migratory status who was born in the national territory and is not registered in the Dominican Civil Registry can be registered in the book for foreigners referred to in General Migration Law No. 285-04, as long as the birth can reliably be proven by the measures established in the regulations of this law.”
“Irregular situation”. “Irregular migratory status”. “Can reliably be proven”. You see the obstacles. Then, also in Article 6, follows the procedure for registration, which appears designed to frustrate the applicant. And bear in mind: Haitian-Dominican children are now almost certain to be registered, if they get as far as that, in “the book for foreigners”, seeing that hardly any of them are listed in the Civil Registry. And many of those who are so listed will already have been told that, in terms of Article I, their registration was done with incorrect documents.
The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights has dismissed the legislation. “Read in conjunction with the National Regularization Plan,“ it said on May 22, “the Naturalization Law formalizes the denial of birthright citizenship to the children of foreigners who were never enrolled in the Civil Registry, in many cases due to the state’s practice of withholding birth certificates from Dominicans of Haitian descent. The new law also denies birthright citizenship to those born between 2007 and 2010 that have been arbitrarily registered as foreigners.”
“The majority of both groups,” it continues, “are Dominican citizens of Haitian descent…Nevertheless, these Dominicans must now self-report as foreigners and submit to a process of ‘regularization’, which may eventually lead to naturalization. Even should individuals from the groups succeed in obtaining naturalized citizenship, they would not enjoy the same rights as (other) Dominicans… Moreover, until they are naturalized, they will remain stateless and without the right to vote or access to basic services like other Dominicans.” Separate and unequal, in other words. Classic apartheid.
Among other things, the Bureau statement said that CARICOM would “request an advisory opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.” Seven months later, no such opinion has been requested. The statement promised that CARICOM would “also consider the introduction of a Resolution at the United Nations General Assembly condemning the ruling.” Seven months later, consideration is no doubt still underway.
And the statement “call(ed) on the global and regional community to pressure the government of the (DR) to adopt urgent measures to ensure that the jaundiced decision of the (DR) Court does not stand and that the full citizenship rights of persons of Haitian descent born in the (DR) are guaranteed.” CARICOM, it added, “accords this matter the highest priority.” My only comment is that, in the circumstances, I would not wish to be low on CARICOM’s order of priorities.
Despite occasional rumblings, welcome though they be, from Ralph Gonsalves and his OAS Ambassador, the organisation has been manifesting a massive shortage of energy and interest where the DR issue is concerned. To the contrary, there are even susurrations of retreat.
I can only speak for myself. I cannot begin to contemplate having friendly relations with a state which so blatantly and cynically, and with such contempt for regional and international opinion, violates the elementary principles of human rights on what is obviously the basis of race.
At their recent meeting in Antigua and Barbuda, the Heads decided to maintain their stance against embracing the DR in the present circumstances. That is to be applauded, but it is not enough. CARICOM must bestir itself to take at least the action it promised the region last November.
