No Citizenship for Nepali Orphans

As I write this, Nepal is in the midst of a constitutional renovation which, the government contends, promises to grant more rights to its people. Yet the current draft of the Nepali constitution  contains draconian and dangerous birthright laws that threaten to strip thousands of Nepali children of their citizenship.

As it's currently drafted, Nepali children could only earn citizenship if they were able to prove that both parents are/were Nepali citizens. Because we're talking about a poor country with high birth rates and death rates, this clearly leaves thousands of people vulnerable to statelessness. Orphans? Children of one foreign and one Nepali parent? Children of unknown parentage? Children whose parents have lost their papers? Already, at least 800,000 Nepalis lack citizenship certificates. These new constitutional provisions would only swell this number to crisis-level proportions.

Easy enough for people in the U.S. to say of Nepal's new constitution , "This is ridiculous!" But frankly, it's not so far from home. There seems to be a disturbing trend these days to blacklist children based on their parents status — what with Nepal's sloppy constitutional reform and the U.S.'s proposed plan to mark the passports of children born to undocumented parents with a scarlet "I." Why are we allowing children to be the casualties of our shoddy immigration systems?

Frankly, Nepal doesn't exactly have a positive track record when it comes to granting citizenship protection — take, for example, the 200,000-plus Bhutanese refugees of Nepali descent trapped in refugee camps in Nepal for over two decades. Nepal has quarantined these folks so dramatically from participating in Nepali society (despite strong cultural, historical and linguistic ties) that their only option for a real future is to resettle in third countries like the U.S. and Canada and start their lives anew.

And now, Nepal is trying to tell thousands of others, "Papers, please — or no citizenship for you."

As Human Rights Watch urged this month, Nepal must broaden its provisions for citizenship to prevent a massive crisis of statelessness, and a colossal abuse of international human rights. Sign this petition to tell Nepali Government Ministers that you agree.

Photo Credit: TheDreamSky