Attention, women of Nepal! For reasons of national security, your child cannot obtain a Nepali citizenship in your name. As per the draft of the new constitution, citizenships of both parents must be submitted to obtain a certificate of Nepali citizenship. This will deny citizenship to thousands of children, and force them to live like fugitives in their own country. Punishment for the crime of being born in Nepal?[break]
I was informed that the new constitution (if there will ever be one) will limit the chances of children receiving citizenship through their mother. Till date, to acquire a citizenship, only the endorsement of one’s father was required, but now, the names and identifications of both parents will be made compulsory.
There are many people whose story the world has never known. Children are prisoners in their own motherland for no crime of theirs. For example, at a young age a woman gets married to a man, and a child is born. After a few years, the man or the ‘husband’ realizes that he already has a family somewhere else, or he abandons the mother and child for some other girl, or just disappears from their life, denying their existence. Then the stateless child is born. The mother works day and night and brings up her child with the dream that one day her child will grow up to be a fine human being, and bring an end to all her pains and sorrows. But reality soon puts a full stop to the dream. The naïve mother does not know that the country doesn’t accept her child’s existence at all.
File Photo/Republica
We have a patriarchal society in our country. The existence of all Nepali women can only be certified by their men folk like their fathers, brothers, husbands, father-in-laws, brother-in-laws, uncles etc. When children are denied their citizenship rights, they cannot apply for a driving license, and neither can they own property, vote, or have a bank account. Nor can they have a passport, which obviously means they cannot travel anywhere in the world.
Nepal is a member of CEDAW, and as such, has signed an understanding which clearly states that “no one in the country will be stateless. Mothers are given equal rights as fathers.” We have seen often that if a child has a Nepali father and a foreign mother, the mother and child get Nepali citizenship with full legal rights, but it is not so for a child with a Nepali mother and foreign father. In the process of trying to get a citizenship for my daughters, I’ve devised the following skewed equations concerning Nepali citizenship: Nepali father + foreign mother = Nepali child, Nepali mother + foreign father = stateless child, raped mother + fatherless child= stateless child, disgraced mother + unknown father = stateless child, unmarried mother + womanizer father = stateless child, divorced mother + stepfather not in mood to accept the child= stateless child and working mother + drunkard/criminal father = Nepali father’s Nepali child.
Now, consider a couple of more bizarre equations: Congresswoman mother+ German father = Nepali citizen, Congresswoman grandmother+ German grandfather + Nepali mother + Bangladeshi father = Nepali citizen.
Equally bizarre are the rules outlined in new Nepal’s new citizenship act! Stateless children can get a citizenship through their mother, BUT the following documents are required: Father’s citizenship, father and mother’s marriage registration certificate, recommendation letter from District Development Officer or Village Development Officer confirming that this child has been conceived by these two people!
Going through Nepal’s citizenship act, I came across another interesting clause: “any unclaimed children found in the territory within the country will be considered Nepali till the time their biological parents are identified”. Hmm… So should those mothers unable to obtain citizenship for their children abandon their children in the street, at a riverbank, or on the footsteps of a temple, as shown in movies??
Some years ago, the Supreme Court made a very important decision in Miss Sabina Damai’s Case, according to which stateless children can now get citizenship through their mother. The condition is that if the mother had multiple physical relationships before conceiving the child and cannot identify the real father, citizenship can be issued through the mother.
Why is it so hard to get a citizenship solely through a mother? The stated reason is that national security will be compromised if citizenships are issued through mothers! They say Indians and Chinese will also try to obtain the Nepali citizenship! Sure, it would be so easy for both the countries to smuggle children from their orphanages and dump them in our territory so that they all get Nepali citizenship! But how many such cases do we know to exist? This clearly shows that the so-called threat to our “nationality” is just a hollow excuse, a flowery blind to keep us in the dark.
I had great faith in Sapana Malla and Meera Dhungana’s fight for women’s rights. They have been fighting for this cause in every level. But because they have not received much support from the general public, the fight is just getting tougher.
This issue is not just a topic of conversation, thousands of Nepali women and their children are suffering from this reality. My suggestion is, if a husband and wife are separated and the child is brought up solely by the mother with or without any financial help from father, then the law must give the mother the right to pass on her name to her child. Or, the children must have the right to choose between their parents when they are 16 years of age.
How are women a threat to national security? The state should stop being a hypocrite and grant rights to women immediately. Women should not be treated only as ATM machines and manpower factories for the government and the country. We must honor the women and mothers of our society and give them equal rights.
deepti@fishtailair.com
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