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Human Rights Victory for Children in the Dominican Republic
On September 25, the Dominican government issued birth certificates to two girls of Haitian descent following an intense four-year legal battle to gain the girls legal recognition in their homeland.
"This case represents a critical first step to release thousands of Dominican children who have been locked out of society by the government's discriminatory policies," said Laurel Fletcher, a lawyer for the girls and the associate director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall).
The government made this unprecedented move after a mission from the Organization of American States (OAS) visited Santo Domingo and discussed the lawsuit filed by the girls before the OAS human rights commission.
Weeks before the government issued the girls legal documents, the Minister of Education announced a new program to increase access to education by permitting parents to apply for birth certificates for their children when they enroll them in school.
"We hope that this change will alleviate the high rate of children who do not attend school because they cannot obtain birth certificates," said Hillary Ronen, a Clinic student working on the case who spent last summer in the Dominican Republic.
Clinic student Linda Merola, who has spent countless hours on the case, said, "I never thought that I could make such a difference solving international problems while still a law student. The experience has taught me a lot about the impact that law can have on the lives of others."
When the girls' families tried to register them in 1997, the Dominican government claimed the girls were not entitled to Dominican nationality, despite constitutional guarantees of this right to anyone born in the country, because the girls' fathers were Haitian.
In justifying denial of their applications, the state official stated she was carrying out a government policy to deny birth certificates to anyone of Haitian descent.
In 1999, the International Human Rights Law Clinic at Boalt Hall; the Center for Justice and International Law in Washington DC (CEJIL); and the Movimiento de Mujeres de Ascendencia Haitiana (MUDHA), a Dominican human rights group, responded by filing the action before the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights charging that the government's action violated the girls' international human rights.
Without birth certificates, children of Haitian parents cannot attend schools and constantly live in fear that they may be arbitrarily expelled from their country as suspected illegal migrants. The case has been a wake-up call to the government to rectify the dire situation in which thousands of its youngest and most vulnerable nationals find themselves.
Equipped with legal proof of their nationality, the girls can now go to school with the knowledge that their seats in the classroom are secure.
Human rights activists have no doubt that international legal action has paid off. As Sonia Pierre, MUDHA's leader stated, "The Inter-American System has helped us immensely. We have been talking about human rights in the Dominican Republic for 40 years and nothing has happened. This is the first time we have seen human rights enforced because of international law. I never thought it possible."
The Clinic continues to press the issue of the right to education before the OAS, hoping to secure universal access to education for all children in the Dominican Republic.
For more information, contact the School of Law Communications Department at 510-642-4143; Laurel Fletcher at 510-643-4792, lef@law.berkeley.edu; Linda Merola at lmerola@boalthall.berkeley.edu; or Hillary Ronen at h_ronen@hotmail.com.
(10/11/01)
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