ROOTS OF STATELESSNESS

Although I consider myself a citizen of many countries, thoughts about stateless people keep coming back to me and force me to reflect and explore the subject. In this artwork, I was thinking of the gender-discriminatory laws that prevent women in so many countries from giving their children their citizenship. Citizenship can only be conferred by a man, but if the children are out of wedlock or their father was stateless himself, or if he died or goes missing, the children are at risk of statelessness and everything related to it: lack of ID, no access to education, health services, lack of the possibility of travelling, etc ..., and often worse, forced separation from the mother. Nepal, Brunei, Malaysia, Bahamas, Sudan, Kuwait and Lebanon are just a few of the 25 countries that still discriminate against women in granting citizenship to their children. While the world struggles to fight the problems of statelessness, these laws, still in force, only roots them.