Waas, Laura van --- "Nationality and Rights" [2011] ELECD 169; in Blitz, K. Brad; Lynch, Maureen (eds), "Statelessness and Citizenship" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Statelessness and Citizenship

Editor(s): Blitz, K. Brad; Lynch, Maureen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800679

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Nationality and Rights

Author(s): Waas, Laura van

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

2. Nationality and rights
Laura van Waas

In the autumn of 2003, a law was passed by the Sri Lankan parliament that
promised to change the lives of several hundred thousand of the country's
inhabitants: the Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act. This
impressive piece of legislation aspired to bring an end to the marginaliza-
tion, disenfranchisement and exclusion of the `Hill Tamils' who had lived
in a condition of statelessness for many decades by granting them Sri
Lankan nationality.1 In time, reports came in of people who had benefited
from the new law and who explained in their own words what this policy
meant:

I was really thankful when my national identity card arrived because it allowed
me to travel to Colombo and find work here. I am earning much more than I
would have if I stayed on the estate.2

The resolution of cases of statelessness through the reinstatement of the
bond of nationality with a state can evidently have a positive impact upon
the individual's enjoyment of rights and quality of life; it can put an end to
years, even a lifetime, of exclusion and abuse. But is this always the case?
And to what extent does the formal acquisition of a nationality put an end
to the difficulties experienced by previously stateless persons? These are
the questions that guide the case studies in the chapters to come, where the
situation of these new citizens of Sri Lanka and that ...