SHADOW Minister of Labour and Social Development Loretta Butler-Turner left for Cape Town, South Africa, yesterday to attend the Conference on Statelessness and Gender Equality jointly hosted by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Parliament of South Africa.
The theme of the conference - on November 26 and 27 - is “Ensuring Everyone’s Right to Nationality: The Role of Parliaments in Preventing and Ending Statelessness”.
The conference is intended to illustrate contributions made by parliamentarians through the adoption of good practices and to look at emerging and future approaches parliaments and their members will need to take to maximise their role in ending statelessness.
“Statelessness, or the absence of a nationality, is a problem affecting some 10 million people globally. There is no region on the planet that does not have significant numbers of stateless persons. In addition to the indignity of being without a nationality, stateless persons are often denied basic rights, such as access to education and health care,” the conference background notes state. “Their exclusion from citizenship marks their lives, and those of their families and communities, in dramatic ways. Yet while statelessness is a serious problem, it is one that can be resolved with relatively simple changes in national law and practice.”
On her return, Mrs Butler-Turner will brief the relevant government officials.
Comments
Regardless 8 years, 5 months ago
One would hope that the representative for Long Island recognizes her constituency's hard line on the boat people from the south and does not return with bleeding heart!
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