Santo Domingo.- The Dominican-Haitian human rights movementReconoci.do on Tuesday doubled down on its claim that there are statelesspeople in the Dominican Republic, where they affirm their right to a nationalityis violated.
"When a person doesn’t have a nationality, and theState which should give me citizenship refuses me, and cannot acquire another,that’s a condition of statelessness," said Reconoci.do representative AnaMaria Belique, interviewed on ZOL 106.5 FM radio.
She said Naturalization Act 169 hasn’t solved anything, andhas left the person in a worse situation instead.
Last week Amnesty International called on the government toopen a dialogue to identify the descendants of undocumented aliens, mostly Haitians,marking three years since the controversial Constitutional Court ruling whichthey affirm has led to continuous statelessness.
Based on figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees,UNHCR, Amnesty estimates the number of people at risk of statelessness at 100,000in the Dominican Republic.