Diaspora

Press Release: The Dominican Bar Association Condemns The Recent Decision By The Dominican Constitutional Court

THE DOMINICAN BAR ASSOCIATION CONDEMNS THE RECENT DECISION BY THE DOMINICAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT WHICH SERVES TO DEPRIVE THOUSANDS OF THEIR DOMINICAN CITIZENSHIP

October 22, 2013 (New York, NY) - Today, the Dominican Bar Association is urging the government of the Dominican Republic to ensure that people born in that country, specifically those born there before 2010, are not rendered stateless pursuant to a recent ruling by the Dominican Constitutional Court. This ruling retroactively applies a 2010 amendment to the Dominican Constitution thereby denying previously conferred citizenship to individuals born in the Dominican Republic on grounds that their parents, while permanently residing within the Dominican Republic at the time they gave birth to those affected, were not legal residents in the Dominican Republic and were thus not entitled to Dominican citizenship.

In 2010, an amendment to the Dominican Constitution – at odds with a 2005 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights – effectively denied citizenship to a select group of people on facts and circumstances that for decades conferred citizenship to thousands of others. Specifically, prior to the amendment in 2010, it had been well settled that the provision on citizenship in the 1929 Dominican Constitution conferred Dominican citizenship to anyone born in the country, irrespective of the legal status of their parents. The 2010 amendment was, by itself, egregious, and deleterious, but in applying the 2010 Constitution retroactively, the recent decision by the Dominican Constitutional Court, which tragically strips Dominican citizenship from those to whom it had already been accorded prior to the 2010 amendment, is unconscionable.

Thus, for an untold number of Dominicans with Haitian parents, born in the Dominican Republic prior to 2010 to non-citizens of Haitian descent, the Court's ruling immediately deprives them of their previously conferred Dominican citizenship. These people are, therefore, immediately rendered stateless, since it is unlikely that even if they travel to Haiti they would be accorded Haitian citizenship.

This ruling and its result is, therefore, antithetical and an anathema to the fundamental right to due process and equality before the law, which democratic governments generally accord to citizens and non-citizens alike. The ruling's retroactivity is also the kind, which civilized societies abhor inasmuch as its effect – to the extent it denies citizenship to those who had legally obtained it - is nothing short of an ex post facto law designed to unfairly target a certain group of people. Accordingly, the Dominican Bar Association strongly condemns this decision and implores the Dominican government to stay its enforcement and take any steps necessary to ameliorate the harm that this decision will and has likely already caused.

Sincerely,

The Board of Directors of the Dominican Bar Association
Press Contact:
Fidel E. Gomez, Esq. at Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.