Atlas of Statelessness: Dignity
Atlas of the Stateless for the Association Rosa Luxemburg (2022)
12 Pages Posted: 11 Aug 2020 Last revised: 12 Dec 2024
Date Written: April 27, 2020
Abstract
People who are stateless are especially vulnerable to deprivations of rights. If they become stateless during their lives, they often lose the rights that they held as citizens in their home state. When they leave, they leave behind more than their rights – they leave behind family and friends and familiar places, things they’ve cherished, places they’ve called home, and the landscapes of their lives. They may leave everything behind. Except their dignity. Whatever the circumstances, dignity should remain intact. So too for those who are born stateless: they may have none of the attachments of citizenship, but they have an attachment to their own human dignity. The original drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights chose to highlight the primacy of the individual person over any group or entity, real or imagined, and to attach dignity to birth of every “member of the human family.”
Because human dignity exists independently of any state and does not need any government to create or define or grant it, it has special salience for those who find themselves stateless. For those who are stateless, human dignity is the energy that animates their rights to claim rights, from one state or another or none at all.
Keywords: stateless, migration, dignity, dignity rights, human rights, refugee
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