Nowhere People

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After 1971, the Urdu-speaking community in Bangladesh was denied nationality and were forced to settle in camps throughout Bangladesh. Today, overcrowding plagues many Urdu-speaking settlements. Living conditions are cramped and pose safety and health problems. Families of as many as 15 members are forced to live in rooms of less than 10 square-metres. A family of seven works in their room in Kurmi Tola Camp in Dhaka. Old newspapers adorn the walls.
Two unemployed young Nubians sit in a youth centre in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya. For years, young Nubians had to go through a nationality verification process called vetting, which caused difficulties for Nubian youth to obtain National ID cards.
A map of West Africa is drawn in chalk on the wall of a home in a remote village in southwestern Cote d'Ivoire. The nationality of hundreds of thousands in Cote d'Ivoire is in questi.on
A stateless woman in eastern Ukraine holds her expired Soviet passport.
Blind in one eye after being beaten in the head during forced labor, this stateless Rohingya man fled from Burma in the mid 1990's and is one of an estimated 900,000 stateless Rohingya living in the southern part of neighboring Bangladesh.
In late 2012, youth from the stateless Bidoon community in Kuwait hold a peaceful demonstration demanding their right to Kuwaiti citizenship. The demonstration was met with a violent crackdown by the authorities.
Over 140,000 Rohingya in Myanmar were displaced from their homes during ethnic violence in 2012 and have been forced to live in internment camps.
Twenty-seven countries in the world, including Lebanon, possess citizenship laws that do not permit women from passing their citizenship to their husbands or their children. This 44-year-old woman is a Lebanese national. She gave birth to her daughter in 2005. The woman's daughter and son were born stateless even though they were born in Lebanon to a mother who is a Lebanese national.
A young girl plays inside her family home located in an informal Roma settlement in Belgrade. She was born in Serbia but has no documentation and is legally invisible.
This stateless man from the Roma community has lived in Italy for over 30 years. Originally from Bosnia, he has been without citizenship and stateless since the break-up of Yugoslavia. Facing discrimination and unable to provide identification or any documents to the local police, he was arrested and put in a detention facility in central Rome.
The Dom (gypsy) community are some of the most vulnerable people in Iraq. This 35-year-old woman holds her Iraqi nationality card and stands with her five and three-year-old daughters. None of her four children have documents. Many of the Dom throughout Iraq, were issued an Iraqi Nationality card with an special 'exception' stamp in it, which many authorities around the country now do not recognize as being legitimate.
Children stand outside their school in a remote batey and recite the Dominican Pledge of Allegiance as the Dominican flag is raised before classes. Most will not be permitted to go to school past the 8th grade because most have been denied documentation based on their Haitian ethnicity, therefore will lack sufficient documentation to continue their studies.

Greg Constantine

American/Canadian documentary photographer Greg Constantine has been drawn to stories that focus on those who have been neglected, f…

Topics
Social Justice
Statelessness

About Nowhere People

As multi-ethnic societies continue to reshape cultures around the world, the basic rights afforded from citizenship have never been more vital to one’s participation and security in society. Yet, many States and people in power use the denial of citizenship to exclude those who they feel threaten their interests and national identity. To add, States are using detention more and more as a permanent part of their immigration policy, which sees refugees, asylum seekers and stateless people being arbitrarily detained for long periods of time.

For ethnic minorities, this fundamental right has never been more fragile and at risk. Stateless people belong to no country, are refused most social, civil and economic rights and are some of the most vulnerable people in the world. Statelessness removes them from the protection of laws and leaves them defenseless against social injustices and human rights abuses. Nowhere People is a ten-year exploration into this under-reported global phenomenon. It investigates the repercussions statelessness has on individuals and communities. Recently, this project has been expanded to take a hard look at the trauma and impact immigration detention has on vulnerable people around the world.