OBMICA Bulletin Editorial Sept. 2024

On September 23, 2013, Judgment 168-13 of the Constitutional Court established that only people born in the country to Dominican parents or to people residing legally are considered Dominican citizens. Through this ruling, the Court retroactively stripped citizenship from people born between 1929 and 2010 to parents of Haitian origin with "irregular" migration status.

This brought to a close many decades during which the authorities in the Dominican Republic adopted various measures, laws, and judicial decisions aimed at denationalizing people born in the country and of Haitian origin. In 2014, the Dominican government adopted Naturalization Law 169-14 with a view to mitigating the impact of the Judgment by seeking to restore nationality to these denationalized people. The results have been mixed and slow over this decade. In addition, the cycle of statelessness threatens to extend into future generations. None of the 7,159 people, never previously registered, who applied under Law 169-14 has achieved naturalization, regardless of two presidential decrees promulgated, the first by former president Danilo Medina and the second by President Luis Abinader. These sought to provide an expedited process for 799 people in this group after they had completed the necessary steps.

As a result of decades of advocacy by civil society organizations for civil registry reform, the country has had new legislation since January 2023 that would help reduce the persistent under-registration and thus foster the eradication of statelessness. However, for hard-to-reach populations, such as descendants of migrants born in the country, victory cannot yet be declared because the new Organic Law 4-23 on Civil Status Acts helps only insofar as the complementary regulations are applied more robustly. It is urgent to orient the National Migrant Regularization Plan, which remained paralyzed until recently, so that the migrant population residing legally by virtue of residence status, and not merely a temporary worker document, can document their children as Dominicans. The final steps of the presidential decrees must be completed in order to fulfill the spirit of Law 169-14. Unfortunately, a significant migrant population has not resolved its domestic legal status because it cannot renew its cards, while numerous people with the right to Dominican nationality have not been able to exercise it. In the worst cases, Dominicans, though not recognized as such, are at risk of being expelled from their own country. In this second administration of President Abinader, whose mandate was renewed in 2024, it is time to resume political dialogue with affected people and make the turn toward a more inclusive citizenship that favors social cohesion. The position of the Dominican@s por Derecho platform can be found on the next page.

Bridget Wooding