Singer Alina Pash supports campaign #IBelong to end statelessness

“Everyone has the right to a nationality,” – said Alina Pash.

8 Nov 2019

November 8, 2019, Kyiv – Ukrainian singer Alina Pash supported the #IBelong Global Campaign to Eradicate Statelessness and called to protect the most vulnerable people under risk of statelessness in Ukraine.

Such people often do not have basic human rights, such as birth registration, education, health care, marriage, employment, and even a death certificate when they die.

At least 10 million people worldwide are estimated to have no citizenship, a third of them are children. A stateless person is a person who has no nationality in any country and therefore cannot access and exercise fundamental human rights. To date, more than 35,600 stateless people or under risk of statelessness live in Ukraine.

“Everyone has the right to a nationality. Unfortunately, for many people, this right remains only on paper. I come from Transcarpathia and know that there is a problem of statelessness affecting many people, mostly from the Roma minority. In the Transcarpathian region, Roma are the fifth largest minority with a population of about 80,000. About 10% of them do not have passports or birth certificates. These people often live in dire straits and are virtually “invisible” to society and the state.” – said Alina Pash.

Most stateless persons are members of Roma minorities, children born in the non-controlled government of Donetsk and Luhansk regions (49,649 as of December 2018), homeless persons, elderly people who still have Soviet passports.

Photo: Museum of the History of Kiev, Varvara Suhenko