Paperless People Podcast #1 What is statelessness?

The Colonialism episode by guest speakers Joshua Castellino and Subin Mulmi, discusses the history and impact of colonialism and its role in creating statelessness. The causes of statelessness that exist today were habituated by the colonial powers to their own benefits with the forced displacement of the colonised leaving thousands of people stateless.

Joshua Castellino is the Executive Director of Minority Rights Group International and Professor of International and Comparative Law at Derby University, United Kingdom. 

 Subin Mulmi is a Human rights lawyer and researcher based in Nepal. He is currently the Executive Director at Nationality for All (NFA).
 
2 NEW EPISODES EVERY MONDAY, 12 JUNE - 3 JULY 2023.

The Digital ID episode featuring Laura Bingham and Mustafa Mahmoud, looks at digitalisation of IDs and the impact this has on statelessness. Colonial powers introduced the idea of documentation to determine who “belongs” to the state and who does not. IDs are another form of discrimination against stateless people that first started with colonialism and this part of the podcast unleashes the history of documentation, politics of digital ID and the discrimination against stateless individuals through the lens of colonialism. 

Laura Bingham is an international human rights lawyer and Executive Director of the Institute for Law, Innovation, and Technology at Temple Law School, United States.

Mustafa Mahmoud is a Co-Director of Namati with over nine years of experience supporting partner organizations working with community-based paralegals on Citizenship rights, inclusion, and statelessness in Kenya, Bangladesh, Jordan, and Myanmar.   

2 NEW EPISODES EVERY MONDAY, 12 JUNE - 3 JULY 2023. 

The Racism & Xenophobia episode featuring Tendayi Achiume and Jaivet Ealom, explores the relationship between institutional racism, xenophobia and statelessness. Many states, whether through their politics or laws, discriminate against minorities, denying them equal access to citizenship. This discrimination against the stateless is rooted in the idea of “outsider”. Colonialism created a system of hierarchy where certain groups think of themselves as superior and more deserving of life. As a result, statelessness is manufactured, and the stateless are denied access to fundamental rights.  

Tendayi Achiume is a Professor of Law at UCLA Law School and former UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

Jaivet Ealom is a Toronto-based author, former refugee, refugee advocate, and the only person known to have escaped from Manus Island Detention Centre in Papua New Guinea. Ealom was born in Mynamar where he faced persecution, as a Rohingya ethnic minority.   

 2 NEW EPISODES EVERY MONDAY, 12 JUNE - 3 JULY 2023. 

Our Patriarchy episode by guest speakers Catherine Harrington and Patricia Low, discusses the patriarchy and its role in creating statelessness. The episode will analyse deep-seated patriarchy, how it views and constructs identity, political participation and gendered roles, and how this creates layers of discrimination against women—women are often seen in opposition to men and their rights, and lives, are at the discretion of men. 

Catherine Harrington is the Campaign Manager for the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, a coalition of UN agencies, international, regional and local NGOs, academics and civil society partners, housed within the Women's Refugee Commission.

Patricia Low is from Malaysia and she is a writer, a mother of two, and an advocate from the Family Frontiers Mothers’ Network. She is one of the many women affected by Malaysia’s gender-unequal citizenship law, which denies citizenship by operation of law to children born abroad to women married to foreign spouses.

2 NEW EPISODES EVERY MONDAY, 12 JUNE - 3 JULY 2023.

The concluding episode reflects on the challenges, successes and cases presented throughout the series, and offers some conclusions while also setting a possible agenda to increase positive change.

The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion has partnered with UNICEF to produce this six-part podcast series, ‘What’s Best for Children’s Nationality’. The series aims to build knowledge around childhood statelessness and the right of every child to a nationality by exploring good practices in the field with examples, challenges and successes from real-life settings. You can share your questions and reflections on the issues raised using the hashtags #NationalityForChildren and/or #ForInclusiveSocieties and find us through our twitter handle @institute_si. You can also send an email to  info@institutesi.org.

Narrator and partner in production is Andy Clark from Podcast4u. Music comes from Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License. 

Episode five of the What’s Best for Children’s Nationality Podcast series zooms back out from the specific country contexts to explore the joint, global UNHCR-UNICEF initiative: the Coalition on Every Child’s Right to a Nationality. UNHCR’s Radha Govil and UNICEF’s Kerry Neal highlight their organisation’s involvement in this Coalition and some real-life problems of childhood Statelessness that they’ve come across through their work. 

The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion has partnered with UNICEF to produce this six-part podcast series, ‘What’s Best for Children’s Nationality’. The series aims to build knowledge around childhood statelessness and the right of every child to a nationality by exploring good practices in the field with examples, challenges and successes from real-life settings. You can share your questions and reflections on the issues raised using the hashtags #NationalityForChildren and/or #ForInclusiveSocieties and find us through our twitter handle @institute_si. You can also send an email to  info@institutesi.org. 

With thanks to the following people for their participation in this episode:

• Radha Govil from the UNHCR
• Kerry Neal from UNICEF

Narrator and partner in production is Andy Clark from Podcast4u. Music comes from Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License. 

This episode of the What’s Best for Children’s Nationality Podcast considers stories of childhood statelessness in South Africa. An interview with Liesl Muller from Lawyers for Human Rights puts strategic litigation and international advocacy at the centre of ensuring safeguards in the nationality law in order to prevent such childhood statelessness. These good practices are also reflected upon by European Roma Rights Centre’s Adam Weiss in the context of antigypsyism in the processes around nationality acquisition. 

The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion has partnered with UNICEF to produce this six-part podcast series, ‘What’s Best for Children’s Nationality’. The series aims to build knowledge around childhood statelessness and the right of every child to a nationality by exploring good practices in the field with examples, challenges and successes from real-life settings. You can share your questions and reflections on the issues raised using the hashtags #NationalityForChildren and/or #ForInclusiveSocieties and find us through our twitter handle @institute_si. You can also send an email to  info@institutesi.org. 

This episode was created in partnership with Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), an independent human rights organisation that supports human rights activism and public interest litigation in South Africa. With thanks to Liesl Muller from LHR and to Adam Weiss from the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC). Our special thanks also goes to Love for her additions to this podcast. 

Narrator and partner in production is Andy Clark from Podcast4u. Music comes from Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License. 

Episode 3 of the What’s Best for Children’s Nationality Podcast explores the situation in Lebanon, where childhood statelessness exists in a setting of forced migration and is linked with obstacles to the registration of births among children of refugees from Syria – leaving them without proof of their ties to their country of origin and at a risk of ending up without a nationality. Martin Clutterbuck from the Norwegian Refugee Council in this podcast talks about how legal counselling and assistance are employed to counter this. 

The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion has partnered with UNICEF to produce this six-part podcast series, ‘What’s Best for Children’s Nationality’. The series aims to build knowledge around childhood statelessness and the right of every child to a nationality by exploring good practices in the field with examples, challenges and successes from real-life settings. You can share your questions and reflections on the issues raised using the hashtags #NationalityForChildren and/or #ForInclusiveSocieties and find us through our twitter handle @institute_si. You can also send an email to  info@institutesi.org. 

This episode was created in partnership with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in the Middle East, a non-governmental, humanitarian organization with 60 years of experience in helping to create a safer and more dignified life for refugees and internally displaced people. With thanks to Martin Clutterbuck from NRC and to Maalini Ramalo from Development of Human Resources for Rural Areas in Malaysia (DHRRA Malaysia). Our special thanks also goes to Kholod and to Racha El Daoi and Mike Bruce from NRC for making those recordings. 

Narrator and partner in production is Andy Clark from Podcast4u. Music comes from Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License. 

In this edition of the What’s Best for Children’s Nationality Podcast we zoom in on Nepal, where gender discrimination in nationality laws creates statelessness among children. Interviews with Nepali activists Deepti Gurung and her daughter Neha demonstrate how community mobilisation, education and awareness raising are being used to promote equal nationality rights and work towards social and legislative change. With Catherine Harrington from the Global Campaign on Equal Nationality Rights explaining that there are 25 countries left around the world that discriminate women in their ability to pass on nationality to their children, lessons drawn from the work in Nepal are relevant to many other advocacy contexts.

The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion has partnered with UNICEF to produce this six-part podcast series, ‘What’s Best for Children’s Nationality’. The series aims to build knowledge around childhood statelessness and the right of every child to a nationality by exploring good practices in the field with examples, challenges and successes from real-life settings. You can share your questions and reflections on the issues raised using the hashtags #NationalityForChildren and/or #ForInclusiveSocieties and find us through our twitter handle @institute_si. You can also send an email to  info@institutesi.org. 

With thanks to the following people for their participation in this episode:

• Deepti and Neha Gurung, from the Citizenship Affected People’s Network in Nepal
• Catherine Harrington, campaign manager for the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights 

Narrator and partner in production is Andy Clark from Podcast4u. Music comes from Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License. 

What are the causes of childhood statelessness? And what would be the consequences? This first episode of the What’s Best for Children’s Nationality podcast covers the basics of the causes and consequences of childhood statelessness, the obligations under the CRC and some reflections on opportunities, challenges and good practices. The episode includes an extended interview with Benyam Dawit Mezmur, a leading international expert on and proponent of the child’s right to nationality, and a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC Committee) and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC). 

The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion has partnered with UNICEF to produce this six-part podcast series, ‘What’s Best for Children’s Nationality’. The series aims to build knowledge around childhood statelessness and the right of every child to a nationality by exploring good practices in the field with examples, challenges and successes from real-life settings. You can share your questions and reflections on the issues raised using the hashtags #NationalityForChildren and/or #ForInclusiveSocieties and find us through our twitter handle @institute_si. You can also send an email to  info@institutesi.org. 

With thanks to Benyam Dawit Mezmur, member of the CRC and ACERWC Committees and Associate Professor of Law at the Dullah Omar Institute for Constitutional Law, Governance and Human Rights at the University of Western Cape. Thanks also to Laura van Waas from the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. 

Narrator and partner in production is Andy Clark from Podcast4u. Music comes from Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License.