The World Council of Churches has called for an end to statelessness around the world, noting data showing that more than 75 per cent of the world’s millions of stateless people are from minority groups.
The WCC’s executive committee issued a statement this week as it meets in Bossey, Switzerland, in which it pointed out that people with no recognised nationality “experience grave and often insurmountable barriers in access to employment, education, health care, property ownership, freedom of movement and political participation”.
“Stateless persons also face greater risks of human trafficking and other forms of exploitation, and often live lives of constant insecurity and fear of arrest, detention and even physical expulsion because they lack official documents,” the statement said. “Children constitute over a third of the global stateless population, and in the countries with the 20 largest stateless populations, approximately 70,000 stateless children are born each year.”
The statement also noted that recent years had seen an increase in “ethno-nationalist, racist and xenophobic narratives and policies globally”.
“We have seen politicians and groups fuelling populist sentiments and manipulating anxieties about national security and economic prosperity against minority groups in general, and promoting ideologies of racial superiority in some contexts. Such developments have a discriminatory effect on individuals’ and groups’ access to nationality”.
The statement called for churches to join with civil society and human rights entities as well as United Nations agencies and regional organisations “to collaborate in order to effectively reduce and eradicate statelessness” and affirmed the role churches play in “lifting up the voice of stateless people around the world, and in making visible those who statelessness has made invisible”.
The statement was one of a flurry of documents released by the executive committee this week. In others, the committee called for an end to the ongoing conflict in Syria “so that the process of reconciliation and rebuilding of a shattered country and society can finally proceed” and for action to address the root causes of crises being seen in numerous South American nations including Brazil, Chile, Venezuela and Bolivia as well as expressing “grave concern” over the development of automated weapons systems around the world and calling for a pre-emptive ban on such “fundamentally objectionable and unconscionable” weapons.
It also expressed “deep regret” over the US announcement on 18th November that it no longer viewed Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as inconsistent with international law.
“The World Council of Churches rejects this new position as both wrong in law and inimical to the pursuit of a just peace for both Palestinians and Israelis,” the statement said. “It seriously undermines remaining hopes for progress towards a two-state solution, the best and only viable path to achieving a sustainable peace founded upon recognition of the equal right of self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians.”
The statement said the WCC “strongly aligns itself with the position expressed by Pope Francis and the Holy See, and agree that this unfortunate decision risks undermining further the Israeli- Palestinian peace process and the already fragile regional stability”.
“Together with the Holy See, we support the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security within the borders recognised by the international community, and equally recognise and support the same right for the Palestinian people.”
