Egypt houses up to 1 million stateless children

afrol News, Norway
Feb 17 2005

afrol News, 16 February – There are believed to be 400,000 to more
than a million children living in Egypt without proper citizen rights,
including the right to an education or to work. Many of them are
born into families were several generations have been stateless,
others are children of a foreign father and an Egyptian mother,
thus without citizen rights.

According to a new report on stateless people released this week by
the Washington-based group Refugees International (RI), Egypt is the
African country with the greatest population of people without citizen
rights. The large group of stateless people in Egypt has accumulated
during a century of immigration and strict nationality legislation,
creating an entire class without basic rights.

The story of many of today’s stateless people in Egypt started in the
early 20th century. The collapse of the Russian and Ottoman Empires
around 1917 led to large-scale displacement, with Egypt being a
favoured destination for refugees. Only the number of Armenians
residing in Egypt was estimated at about 70,000-75,000 prior to the
Egyptian revolution of 1952, according to the RI report.

Subsequently, an agreement between the Egyptian government and the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1954, and
later ratified in May 1981, assigned the UNHCR the responsibility
of caring for stateless populations living in Egypt – individuals of
Russian, Armenian, Yugoslav, Albanian, Hungarian, Czech, Bulgarian,
Polish, Romanian and Estonian origins.

Officially, only some 130 stateless persons remain of concern to
UNHCR. In reality, however, large numbers of descendents from these
Eastern European and Middle East immigrants still live in Egypt, the
country they were born, without citizen rights. Also the children of
later immigrants live in this stateless limbo.

They cannot obtain an Egyptian passport as their father is not
Egyptian, according to current legislation. Only males may confer
citizenship. This in effect also leaves any child born to an Egyptian
mother and a non-Egyptian father stateless.

According to RI, these children “cannot attend public school or
state universities, are barred from certain professional schools,
and cannot work without meeting foreign residency requirements and
obtaining work permits.” There are believed to be 400,000 to more
than a million such children in the country, RI estimates.

These children and adult descendents of immigrants only know Egypt as
their country. They were born there and – due to a lack of citizenship
– mostly have been barred from leaving the country. They risk not
being let to return to their home if they go abroad. They must pay
large annual fees to get a work permit. They pay taxes but are not
entitled to social security.

In 2003, President Hosni Mubarak closed the annual ruling party
conference with a number of announcements, including a statement that
the Interior Ministry would begin processing citizenship applications
for children of Egyptian mothers and foreign fathers. It has been
predicted that if the President’s assurances are implemented, Egyptian
women will gain the historic right to pass their nationality on to
their children.

Excluded, however, are the many Palestinians residing in Egypt –
estimated at 55,000 to 77,000 – based on a 1959 agreement not to
give Palestinians citizenship in order to preserve their national
identity. Palestinian authorities expect these refugees to return to
Palestine once a state is established there.

Also, Palestinian men who have left the country to work abroad face
further difficulties because Egypt has closed the office that issues
return visas. “They live abroad illegally and cannot return to Egypt,
a situation that makes them stateless,” according to the RI report.

By staff writer