1. Lack of Legal Safeguards Against Childhood Statelessness
Bhutanese citizenship law does not address access to citizenship for foundlings or children born to stateless parents. The lack of legal safeguards leaves children, particularly members of ethnic minority groups who have been denied citizenship, vulnerable to statelessness. The requirement under the citizenship law of Bhutan that both parents possess Bhutanese nationality has reportedly left some children born to unwed mothers who were unable to prove the identity of the father at the risk of statelessness.
2. Citizenship Stripping and Discriminatory Nationality Laws
In the late 1980s, members of ethnic Nepali communities known as ‘Lhotshampas’ living in the south of the country were labelled as non-citizens through a census count, stripping them of their Bhutanese citizenship. In the early 1990s, the Bhutanese government began expelling persons from their land and the country with as many as 100,000 refugees arriving in Nepal during the 1990s. While most of this population has been resettled in the decades since, in 2022 approximately 6,365 persons remained in refugee camps in Nepal. The most recent estimates of the remaining population of Lhotshampas still living in Bhutan puts the population at 250,000.
3. Administrative Barriers
In Bhutan, in order to access services such as “public health care, employment, access to primary and secondary education, enrollment at institutions of higher education, travel documents, and business ownership”, stateless persons often have to show ‘no objection certificates’ and police security clearance certificates. Stateless persons are often unable to obtain such certificates, limiting their access to these services. Despite this, Bhutan’s National Commission for Women and Children has stated that stateless children do have access to public education and health services.
Bhutan has reported an 88% birth registration rate as of 2022. Children are given a Unique Citizenship Identity at birth which is generated immediately after the birth is registered. Births in Bhutan must be registered within the first 21 days of the date of birth. Documents required for birth registration include a notification of birth or birth document and the parents’ Court Marriage Certificate and the child must be at or under one year of age. Registering a child after they have surpassed one year of age entails a lengthy process of gaining endorsement by local officials and justifying the reason for late registration. It appears that parents who are not married or do not have a Court Marriage Certificate are unable to register the birth of their child. If the parents do not have the Certificate, they must get their marriage endorsed by local authorities to register their child’s birth. This, along with the added procedures for late registration, may present a barrier to birth registration in Bhutan. As the process of birth registration is directly linked to citizenship acquisition in Bhutan, it could leave some children born to unwed parents or requiring late registration vulnerable to statelessness.
