Indonesia Causes of Statelessness

1. Lack of Legal Safeguards Against Childhood Statelessness

In 2006 Indonesia introduced a new citizenship law removing provisions that discriminated on both gender and ethnic grounds. Under this law both foundling children and children of stateless parents born in Indonesia are considered citizens of Indonesia under the Law on Citizenship. Although the Law on Citizenship now recognizes both foundling children and those born to stateless parents as citizens of Indonesia, the absence of specific guidelines and procedures to ensure the effective implementation of these provisions has resulted in difficulties concerning verification, documentation, and access to basic rights. Without a process to verify their citizenship, there is a risk of cases where people may be denied citizenship. Additionally, without documentation confirming their citizenship, they may encounter difficulties in accessing fundamental rights such as education, healthcare, and legal protection. Efforts made by the government and relevant stakeholders to address these challenges have been relatively limited. There is a need for an approach that includes establishing transparent procedures to verify citizenship, providing necessary documentation, and ensuring the protection of rights for these individuals.

2. Citizenship Stripping

In February 2020, the government of Indonesia disallowed over 1,000 Indonesian citizens who had left Indonesia and joined the Islamic State from returning to the country. While not officially stripping these individuals (who include family members of fighters) of their citizenship, concerns have been raised over the risk of future statelessness faced by this population group.

3. Administrative Barriers

he main cause of statelessness in Indonesia has been attributed by UNHCR to be administrative barriers to birth registration, affecting as many as 50 million people. Concern has been raised by a number of academics, and both the CRC and the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families regarding the large number of children born in Indonesia to migrant worker parents who have not been able to access birth registration and risk statelessness. Additionally, while ethnically discriminatory nationality laws were revoked in 2006, some persons of Chinese and Indian descent still face administrative barriers to accessing citizenship due to a lack of identity documents or where persons have identity documents which include an incorrect recording of their citizenship status.

The CEDAW recently commended Indonesia for increasing the number of children with birth certificates from 32.25% to 90.56% between 2014 and 2019. Despite this, Indonesia has reported an 81% birth registration rate as of 2022.