1. Discriminatory Nationality Laws
Ethnic discrimination in nationality law, leading to the denial of citizenship to Rohingya populations has been the key cause of statelessness in Myanmar. Ethnic discrimination within Myanmar citizenship law was codified in the 1982 Citizenship Law which limited citizenship to certain ‘national races’ (which did not include the Rohingya). Denial of citizenship of the Rohingya was a key component of the systemic oppression and persecution of the Rohingya people by the government and military of Myanmar before the 2017 ‘clearance operations’. The Rohingya are not the only victims of this discriminatory nationality law as any group not included on the list of 135 ethnic groups is denied the right to citizenship. Decision making for granting citizenship does not have a time limit or mechanism for review or appeal. The lack of avenues for redress have led to “arbitrariness, corruption and bribery to speed up decisions or secure a positive outcome”.
2. Lack of Legal Safeguards Against Childhood Statelessness
The citizenship law of Myanmar does not provide any right to nationality for foundling children or children born to stateless parents. This lack of legal safeguards further cement intergenerational statelessness within the country.
3. Citizenship Stripping
Myanmar’s citizenship legislation includes vague, overarching provisions allowing for the revocation of citizenship. An associate or a naturalized citizen’s citizenship may be stripped under the broad grounds of being “in the interest of the State”. This provision has also been used to strip citizenship of opposition and resistance politicians in recent years. Many Rohingya are referred to as naturalized citizens on citizenship applications, essentially denying them full citizenship rights. There are no legislative protections for those who have their citizenship revoked from becoming stateless. Since dual nationality is prohibited in Myanmar, many people could become stateless as a result of revocation of citizenship.
4. Administrative Barriers
Aside from discriminatory legislation and lack of legal safeguards, corruption perpetuates the issue of statelessness in Myanmar. The processing of citizenship applications has lacked transparency and consistency. In some cases, citizenship applications have required Rohingyas to have their ethnicity listed as ‘Bengali’, which is not only a stigmatizing term, but can lead to denial of citizenship as ‘Bengali’ is not included on the list of 135 ethnic groups.
Field research has shown that both majority and minority ethnicities experience difficulties in processing citizenship applications, including having to pay bribes to the Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population (MoLIP), attend several appointments with MoLIP, and provide extensive documentation of their identity, their parents’ identities, and their grandparents’ identities in order to process an application. It is extremely difficult for poor communities to be able to fulfil these requirements of this process, effectively excluding them from accessing citizenship. Muslims are particularly targeted for being forced to pay higher charges for citizenship applications. While legislation stipulates that the fee for a citizenship card costs around 4 cents in USD, Rohingyas have been reported to pay upwards of 350-420 USD. The extensive documentation required for the process also excludes a third of the population in Myanmar (54% being women) who do not possess a legal identity or identity documentation.
In the past decades the provision and withdrawal of civil registration documents has been complex, discriminatory, and a key component of the persecution of the Rohingya population in Myanmar.2917 It has been argued that it is the implementation of the 1982 Citizenship Law and the failure of the government of Myanmar to facilitate the naturalization of Rohingya populations, and the degradation of the documented status of Rohingya that is also a key cause of statelessness within Myanmar (not simply the discriminatory law alone).
The CRC identified that administrative barriers such as lack of awareness of “the importance of birth registration; a non-user-friendly system; a lengthy process to obtaining birth certificates at the township level; unofficial fees associated with the birth registration system; the existence of the local order restricting marriages for Rohingya people; and the practice aimed at reducing the number of their children” contribute to a large number of Rohingya children remaining unregistered. Children born to parents of unregistered marriages are considered illegitimate and are excluded from receiving official documentation. Administrative barriers to marriage registration, such as lengthiness of the process, corruption and discrimination, have lowered access to marriage registration for many Rohingyas. The inability to register a marriage perpetuates the lack of registration for Rohingya children and has led to women resorting to dangerous abortions and couples fleeing the country.
People living in remote areas in Myanmar also experience barriers to accessing birth registration. Myanmar’s birth registration rate was reported to UNICEF as 81% as of 2016.
