The Constitutional Court Ruling Triggers Rejection in the Dominican Republic

October 2013--On September 23, the Constitutional Court (TC) of the Dominican Republic issued Ruling 168-13, establishing that people born in the country whose parents were undocumented will cease to have Dominican nationality. The measure will apply to all persons born in the country from 1929 to the present. That is, the State will strip nationality from 4 generations of people who for 8 decades were registered as Dominicans under the protection of the Constitution and laws in force.

The ruling, which violates at least four articles of the Dominican Constitution and appeals to racial criteria to take away nationality, will affect thousands of Dominicans of the most diverse origins, especially those of Haitian descent whose Dominican identity documents the State has already been taking away since 2007. In response to the rejection of the ruling, Dominican@s por Derecho was formed, a group made up of civil society organizations to defend the rights of Dominicans of foreign ancestry affected by the denationalization policy.

At the international level, voices of concern have also been raised about the ruling. Various United Nations bodies, as well as actors from the Inter-American Human Rights System, Amnesty International, and regional organizations such as CARICOM, have declared the danger posed by denationalizing more than 240,000 people who already had identity documents.

In that regard, the expressions of solidarity received from various communities of Dominicans and their descendants living in the United States and Puerto Rico are also noteworthy.

In the midst of the crisis, President Danilo Medina himself received a delegation of affected persons, whom he recognized as Dominicans, and promised to begin a process of consultations with various State institutions until a humane, fair, and supportive solution could be found for the situation of thousands of people left at risk of statelessness because of the ruling.