{"id":202158,"date":"2018-10-04T17:34:17","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T20:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=202158"},"modified":"2019-06-30T16:59:37","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T19:59:37","slug":"stateless-arabs-given-brazilian-nationality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/stateless-arabs-given-brazilian-nationality\/","title":{"rendered":"Stateless Arabs given Brazilian nationality"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 The sisters Maha and Souad Mamo were given Brazilian nationality this Thursday (4) by the\u00a0Ministry of Justice<\/a> at an event during the 69th<\/sup> session of the Executive Committee of the\u00a0United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR<\/a>), in Geneva, Switzerland. Last June, they had been the first stateless persons recognized as Brazilian citizens. The naturalization papers were presented by the coordinator-general of Brazil\u2019s National Committee for Refugees (CONARE), Bernardo Lafert\u00e9, and by ambassadress Maria Nazareth Farani Azev\u00eado, who\u2019s Brazil\u2019s permanent representative with the UN in Geneva.<\/p>\n

The event was considered a historic moment by Brazilian authorities. \u201cIn bestowing Brazilian nationality on sisters Maha and Souad Maho, Brazil reaffirms its tradition of welcoming the vulnerable and unassisted, setting an example and proving to the world that it has been and always will be a country committed to ending statelessness,\u201d a Justice Ministry communiqu\u00e9 quoted minister Torquato Jardim as saying.<\/p>\n

The new Migration Law, in effect since November 2017, comprises a special section on protection of stateless persons, which provides for residence and simpler naturalization procedures. \u201cThank you so, so much! I can\u2019t believe it, it\u2019s a dream come true for a country such as Brazil to make someone\u2019s dream a reality. This Law is not just for show, it has really been put to work. Thank you so much!,\u201d the communiqu\u00e9 quoted Maha Mamo as saying.<\/p>\n

According to Bernardo Lafert\u00e9, whose grandfather was stateless, this is the latest step against statelessness in the country\u2019s laws. \u201cThe commitment began with the adoption of two forms of original nationality, through land and through blood, and now it this been extended to recognized stateless persons through a simpler naturalization process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The sisters were unable to get nationality in Lebanon, where they were born, or Syria, where their parents are from<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maha and her siblings were unable to get nationality in Lebanon, where they were born, and in Syria, where their parents come from. Since their parents were from different religions, their marriage was not recognized in Syria. As a consequence, their children weren\u2019t recognized as Lebanese nor Syrian.<\/p>\n

In Geneva, Maha Mamo was a speaker in the event Building momentum: mid-point of the #IBelong Campaign<\/em>, in the sidelines of the UNHCR session, which covered the impact and advances made by the latter\u2019s #IBelong campaign to end statelessness worldwide by 2024.<\/p>\n

She told her and her siblings\u2019 stories, including the streamlined naturalization procedure in Brazil, which welcomed her in 2014. The Embassy of Brazil in Lebanon was the only embassy to respond to Maha\u2019s call for help, by giving her and her siblings a passport to enter the country.<\/p>\n

Two years after moving to Brazil, they were given refugee status, which ensured them rights similar to those of other citizens. This was the first time Maha and her siblings ever had IDs: they all got Foreigner IDs, and all related benefits. Maha\u2019s brother was killed by a robber in Brazil. Still, the sisters kept trying, and got their college diplomas revalidated via a project by NGO Compassiva.<\/p>\n

Statelessness<\/strong><\/p>\n

The UNHCR estimates that some 10 million people around the world have no nationality \u2013 or else their nationality isn\u2019t recognized by any country. This is an impediment to getting birth certificates, and therefore any other ID. This is why stateless people have trouble doing even run-of-the-mill activities.<\/p>\n

Statelessness stems from a number of reasons, such as discrimination against minorities in national laws, failure to recognize all residents in a country as citizens when said country attains independence (secession) and legal conflicts between countries.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s commitment to preventing and ending statelessness was promulgated as per the UN\u2019s 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. It was later reaffirmed under the 2014 Brazil Action Plan, which established the Statelessness Eradication program, which put forth the main challenges and actions needed in order for the goals to be attained the following decade.<\/p>\n

Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum<\/strong><\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Press Release<\/div>\n
UNHCR\/Victoria Hugueney<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Syrian-Lebanese sisters Maha and Souad Mamo were the first stateless persons to be recognized as citizens in Brazil, in June of this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2324,"featured_media":202139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[339,340,34545,2598,1902,468,5360,432,1829],"class_list":{"0":"post-202158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-foreign-affairs","8":"tag-lebanon","9":"tag-un","10":"tag-brasileira-en","11":"tag-ministry-of-justice","12":"tag-refugees","13":"tag-stateless","14":"tag-statelessness","15":"tag-syria","16":"tag-unhcr"},"wps_subtitle":"Syrian-Lebanese sisters Maha and Souad Mamo were the first stateless persons to be recognized as citizens in Brazil, in June of this year. ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2324"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}