Shadow Minister of Labour and Social Development Loretta Butler-Turner travels to Cape Town, South Africa today to attend the Conference on Statelessness and Gender Equality jointly hosted by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Parliament of South Africa. The conference will be held from November 26 to 27. The theme of the conference is "Ensuring everyone's right to nationality: The role of parliaments in preventing and ending statelessness".
The background notes for the conference state, "By focusing on this theme the conference is intended to illustrate contributions made by parliamentarians through the adoption of good practices and to look at emerging and future approaches parliaments and their members will need to take to maximize their role in ending statelessness."
The background notes for the conference further state, "Statelessness, or the absence of a nationality, is a problem affecting some 10 million people globally. There is no region on the planet that does not have significant numbers of stateless persons. In addition to the indignity of being without a nationality, stateless persons are often denied basic rights, such as access to education and health care.
"Their exclusion from citizenship marks their lives, and those of their families and communities, in dramatic ways. Yet while statelessness is a serious problem, it is one that can be resolved with relatively simple changes in national law. Parliamentarians therefore have a vital role to play in implementing legal reforms to prevent, reduce and ultimately end statelessness worldwide.
"Statelessness may occur for a variety of reasons, including discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or gender; the emergence of new states and transfers of territory between existing states (state succession); conflict of nationality laws and the presence of simple safeguards, such as those for foundlings.
"Whatever the cause, statelessness has serious consequences for people in almost every country and in all regions of the world. Stateless persons are often denied enjoyment of a range of rights, including access to identity documents, education, employment and healthcare."
The development of an action plan for the ability of parliaments to help end statelessness is an expected outcome of the conference. After returning from the conference, Butler-Turner will brief the relevant government officials and will also speak to the press.
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