Monrovia – A man without a country has a friend in Brewerville minister Kortu Brown, who made a personal cause of stateless people.
Report by Zack Williams, News Contributor
The Pentecostal Minister of the Gospel represents Liberia in an international church effort to ensure that all Africans have a nationality.
The 54-year-old Prelate plans to assemble leaders from the government, UNMIL and other churches next month to confront the issue.
In the meantime, he spreads the word about the effort by inviting a dozen local journalists for a July 21 meeting at the Presbyterian Church of Liberia in downtown Monrovia.
He spoke of the worldwide problem of statelessness and how Christian churches can make a difference by leveraging their influence.
“The church is the eye and the ear of the community,” Brown said in an interview.
“The church has such a huge influence in Liberia so a campaign like End Statelessness … will be more effective in Liberia through the intervention of the church.”
The World Council of Churches met last month in Addis Ababa to determine actions that would aid a UN initiative to end statelessness by 2024. That plan encourages reforms to nationality laws, resolution of ongoing cases of statelessness and better collection of data on vulnerable populations.
There is only one verified case of a stateless person in Liberia. A man of Burundi origin came to Liberia years ago but has no legal status in any country.
His lack of official documentation places him in a legal limbo where he lacks the same rights as other residents. But he is not alone. A similar problem affects about 10 million people worldwide.
Stateless people differ from refugees. The latter fled their homes because of war or natural disaster whereas stateless people often live in the country of their birth — but with no official status.
Sometimes this happens because parents brought a child to a country that was not their own. Nationality laws differ country to country but many — including Liberia —afford citizenship by blood rather than birthplace. Twenty-seven countries don’t allow a mother to automatically pass citizenship to her children.
Large populations also become stateless through government discrimination. This happened to Jews in Nazi Germany as well as about 1.3 million Rohingya people in Burma.
A 1982 law denies the Rohingya citizenship, which means children from the Muslim minority struggle for access to basic education. Royingya girls fare worse than boys with only 4.8 percent of them completing primary school, compared to 16.8 percent of stateless boys. More than 40 percent of Burmese children complete primary school, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
Overall, about a third of stateless people are children, according to the UN. They often have no record of their origins and are vulnerable to exploitation because of their status. Without help, their children eventually continue the cycle of statelessness.
“You never know when you will overcome it,” Brown said in an interview. “You’re helpless. You need someone to speak out for you. You need someone to care about you.”
The role of statelessness in the instability in Cote d’Ivoire is one reason that Liberians should remain concerned about an issue that doesn’t directly affect them, according to Brown.
Many people in Cote d’Ivoire remain under unclear legal status, according to the UN report titled “Ending Statelessness Within 10 Years.”
Their status played an important role in the civil wars that only ended in 2012. Reforms the next year allowed hundreds of thousands of people to acquire citizenship through an application process.
Among them was Bere Tassourmane who the report said ran for government office after receiving citizenship. Five of his friends also prevailed in local elections, according to the report.
A spirit of reconciliation can accompany resolution to the problem of statelessness, suggests the report, allowing people to participate in a society that formerly spurned them. The experience of victimhood does not have to recur and can be used to make a society more equitable in general, according to Tassourmane.
“We are working for the well-being of our community out of love because we ourselves were marginalized,” he said, according to the report.