Statelessness to Citizenship Up-Country (Plantation Tamils) / Tamils in Sri Lanka P.P.Sivapragasam (Siva) - Human Development Organization, Sri Lanka. Sivahdo@gmail.com “Every one has the right to a nationality” and “No-one shall be nationality” (UDHR Art.15) 1 . However statelessness continues to discrimination, exploitation, and forced displacement of Minorities Statelessness is not only a source of Human insecurity and a cause conflicts. arbitrarily deprived of this be a fundamental cause of in all regions of the world. of forced displacement and Causes of statelessness     Political upheaval – Internal political crisis among countries. Targeted discrimination (often for reasons of race, religion or ethnicity) Differences in laws between countries, laws relating to marriage and birth registration. Nationality based on descent (usually that of the father) and abandonment. Lack of means to register children. The statelessness interlinked with the refuge problem. During and after the Second World War many people over crossed national boundaries, ultimately this brought refuge, statelessness and citizenship problem to many countries. Up-country Plantation Tamils - Statelessness Resulting from Forced Movements & Migration Under the international law, a stateless person is one “who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law.” (Article 1, 1954 Convention relating to the status of stateless persons2). This definition is helpfully concise and to the point. But it is also a very limited and somewhat legalistic of definition. The Up-country Plantation Tamils are 4.4 percent of the total population of Sri Lanka3. Around 80 percent o f the Upcountry Plantation Tamils, are an ethnic minority group concentrated in the tea plantation sector, and most of them are workers in the plantations and residing within the plantation areas. More than 50% are housed in so-called ‘labor lines; 67.8% of them still live in single house/line rooms4 which were built during the colonial era. They are descendants of those whom 1 2 3 4 http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights (Accessed on 14 / 11 / 2018 ) UNHCR (2014), The Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, UNHCR Pub, Geneva (Accessed on 14/11/2018) http:www.seu.ac.lk/researchandpublications/symposium/5th/religiousandculturalstudies/51.pdf (Accessed on 15/11/2018) Department of Censors & Population (2014), Household Income & Expenditure Survey 2012/2013, Colombo. 1