The Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti experienced a diplomatic crisis in 2013. The principal point of conflict was an issue of trade restrictions, but it unfolded against the background of the DR's attempt to return thousands of DR residents of Haitian descent to Haiti. More than 3,000 Haitians had been expelled from the DR in the first half of the year.[1]
On June 6, 2013, Haiti imposed a ban on the importation of chickens and eggs from the DR, citing indications that there was an outbreak of bird flu there. DR officials said other types of flu but not bird flu had been identified.[2] On June 10, the Pan American Health Organization stated that no cases of bird flu had been found in the DR.[citation needed]
The DR ships 30 million eggs and 1.5 million chickens to Haiti monthly. By June 19, activity at the four border crossings between the two countries had come to a standstill. Medina announced that the DR would work to identify new markets and grow those already established in Puerto Rico and Venezuela. The head of the Dominican Association of Egg Producers said that thousands of poultry farm workers, who he identified as Haitians, would have to be fired.[2] Casimir said Haiti wanted to find a way to reopen trade, while Medina said he could not wait and would have to take "drastic measures".[4]
Presidents Michel Martelly of Haiti and Medina of the DR discussed their differences on 30 June during a meeting of the Petrocaribe oil alliance nations in Nicaragua. Medina said that Martelly admitted there were no problems with the quality of eggs and chickens from the Dominican Republic and that the ban had been imposed as a matter of economic policy based on Haiti's difficulty in collecting tax revenues associated with the imports.[5] The import ban remained in place.[6]
On July 19, the Haitian government prohibited the importation of plastics from the Dominican Republic, arguing that they were not of good quality and that Haiti needed to reduce pollution caused by plastic.[7]
On September 23, 2013, the Dominican Republic Constitutional Court ruled that children born to non-citizens in the Dominican Republic after 1929 are not and have never been citizens of the Dominican Republic. Since 2010 the DR constitution has denied citizenship to any non-citizen born "in transit",[8] but the court extended that language to cover any undocumented person resident in the DR and their descendants.[9] The ruling affects 458,233 Haitian workers living in the Dominican Republic and it can leave more than 200,000 people stateless. One analysis reported that the court decision created the fifth largest groups of stateless people in the world.[10] A group of writers who protested the ruling compared its impact to apartheid and said it represented "the reinstating of the old racism that many have fought against". They described its impact:[11]
Dominicans born after 1929 to parents who are not of Dominican ancestry are to have their citizenship revoked. The ruling affects an estimated 250,000 Dominican people of Haitian descent, including many who have had no personal connection with Haiti for several generations.
The government of the DR said the decision would allow for the proper documentation of non-citizens and allow the government to establish clearly their means of becoming legal residents of the DR.[9] Advocates for the stateless criticized the DR's procedures as inadequate and ill-suited to an impoverished rural population that lacked the required birth registration records.[10]
On October 1, Haiti recalled its ambassador from the Dominican Republic.[12]
The Dominican government's acceptance of implementation of the court ruling was harshly criticized by NGO human rights offices, by 15 countries in the Caribbean Community (Caricom) and by the United Nations.[citation needed]Amnesty International said the DR had "effectively wiped four generations of Dominicans off the map".[13]
The Dominican Republic is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with Haiti, making Hispaniola one of only two Caribbean islands, along with Saint Martin, that is shared by two sovereign states. It is the second-largest nation in the Antilles by area at 48,671 square kilometers (18,792 sq mi), and second-largest by population, with approximately 11.4 million people in 2024, of whom approximately 3.6 million live in the metropolitan area of Santo Domingo, the capital city.
Poultry are domesticated birds kept by humans for the purpose of harvesting useful animal products such as meat, eggs or feathers. The practice of raising poultry is known as poultry farming. These birds are most typically members of the superorder Galloanserae (fowl), especially the order Galliformes. The term also includes waterfowls of the family Anatidae and other flying birds that are kept and killed for their meat such as the young pigeons, but does not include wild birds hunted for food known as game or quarry.
Jus soli, meaning 'right of the soil', is the right of anyone born in the territory of a state to nationality or citizenship, also commonly referred to as birthright citizenship in some Anglophone countries, is a rule defining a person's nationality based on their birth in the territory of the country.
In international law, a stateless person is someone who is "not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law". Some stateless people are also refugees. However, not all refugees are stateless, and many people who are stateless have never crossed an international border. At the end of 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated 4.4 million people worldwide as either stateless or of undetermined nationality, 90,800 more than at the end of 2021.
Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez is a Dominican cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and archbishop emeritus of Santo Domingo.
Chick culling or unwanted chick killing is the process of separating and killing unwanted chicks for which the intensive animal farming industry has no use. It occurs in all industrialised egg production, whether free range, organic, or battery cage. However, some certified pasture-raised egg farms are taking steps to eliminate the practice entirely. Worldwide, around 7 billion male chicks are culled each year in the egg industry. Because male chickens do not lay eggs and only those in breeding programmes are required to fertilise eggs, they are considered redundant to the egg-laying industry and are usually killed shortly after being sexed, which occurs just days after they are conceived or after they hatch. Some methods of culling that do not involve anaesthetics include: cervical dislocation, asphyxiation by carbon dioxide, and maceration using a high-speed grinder. Maceration is the primary method in the United States. Maceration is often a preferred method over carbon dioxide asphyxiation in western countries as it is often considered as "more humane" due to the deaths occurring immediately or within a second.
H5 N2 is a subtype of the species Influenzavirus A. The subtype infects a wide variety of birds, including chickens, ducks, turkeys, falcons, and ostriches. Affected birds usually do not appear ill, and the disease is often mild as avian influenza viral subtypes go. Some variants of the subtype are much more pathogenic than others, and outbreaks of "high-path" H5N2 result in the culling of thousands of birds in poultry farms from time to time. It appears that people who work with birds can be infected by the virus, but suffer hardly any noticeable health effects. Even people exposed to the highly pathogenic H5N2 variety that killed ostrich chicks in South Africa only seem to have developed conjunctivitis, or a perhaps a mild respiratory illness. There is no evidence of human-to-human spread of H5N2. On November 12, 2005 it was reported that a falcon was found to have H5N2.
Denaturalization is the loss of citizenship against the will of the person concerned. Denaturalization is often applied to ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Denaturalization can be a penalty for actions considered criminal by the state, often only for errors in the naturalization process such as fraud. Since the 9/11 attacks, the denaturalization of people accused of terrorism has increased. Because of the right to nationality, recognized by multiple international treaties including Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, denaturalization is often considered a human rights violation.
H5N8 is a subtype of the influenza A virus and is highly lethal to wild birds and poultry. H5N8 is typically not associated with humans. However, seven people in Russia were found to be infected in 2021, becoming the first documented human cases.
Poultry farming is the form of animal husbandry which raises domesticated birds such as chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese to produce meat or eggs for food. Poultry – mostly chickens – are farmed in great numbers. More than 60 billion chickens are killed for consumption annually. Chickens raised for eggs are known as layers, while chickens raised for meat are called broilers.
The 2008 bird flu outbreak in West Bengal was an occurrence of avian influenza in West Bengal, India which began on January 16, 2008. The infection was caused by the H5N1 subtype of the Influenza A virus and impacted at least thirteen districts, including Birbhum, Nadia, Murshidabad, Burdwan, Hooghly, Cooch Behar, Malda, Bankura, Purulia, Howrah, West Midnapore, South 24 Parganas and South Dinajpur. A range of precautions has been instituted including a large cull of chickens, eggs, and poultry birds, the imposition of segregation zones, and a disinfection programme for the plant. The government put a blanket ban on the movement of poultry birds from West Bengal.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in the Dominican Republic do not enjoy the same rights as non-LGBT residents, and face legal and social challenges that are not experienced by other people. While the Dominican Criminal Code does not expressly prohibit same-sex sexual relations or cross-dressing, it also does not address discrimination or harassment on the account of sexual orientation or gender identity, nor does it recognize same-sex unions in any form, whether it be marriage or partnerships. Households headed by same-sex couples are also not eligible for any of the same rights given to opposite-sex married couples, as same-sex marriage is constitutionally banned in the country.
Important political issues in the Kuwait include rights for immigrant workers, stateless people, gun control, and education reform. Kuwait has the largest number of stateless people in the entire region. The Bedoon issue in Kuwait is largely sectarian. The Kuwaiti Bedoon crisis resembles the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar (Burma).
The Bedoon or Bidoon, fully Bidoon jinsiya, are stateless people in several Middle Eastern countries, but particularly in Kuwait, where there is a large population of stateless people who lack access to many of the country's basic services. It is widely believed that the Bedoon issue in Kuwait is sectarian in nature.
Félix Ramón Bautista Rosario is a Dominican Republic member of the Senate of the Dominican Republic since 2010. In the period 1996-2000 he was appointed Deputy Director of the Office of Supervising Engineers of State, term in which his privately held companies executed the biggest contracts of the state. Six months later, he was appointed as Director of the Coordinating Office of State Works, a post he held until the month of August 2000. He was Director of the Office of Supervising Engineers of State with the rank of Secretary of State during the period August 2004-August 2010. He is also an active businessman in the construction industry, the principal owner of HADOM Construction and ROFI SA., companies who have been year by year executing bulky contracts mysteriously won in "public" tenders He was sworn in as Senator of the Dominican Republic by the Province of San Juan on 16 August 2010.
The Haitian minority of the Dominican Republic is the largest ethnic minority in the Dominican Republic since the early 20th century.
Human rights in the Dominican Republic constitute the civil and political rights and freedoms legally protected under the Constitution of the Dominican Republic and enforced by the government through common and statutory law. The majority of human rights disputes are presided over by the highest court of constitutional appeal, the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal. These rights and freedoms have developed over time in accordance with the Dominican Republic's expansion from the former Spanish colony of the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo to its modern state formation. The history of human rights in the state have also been marked by the oscillation between democratic administrations, such as the current presidency of Danilo Medina, and authoritarian administrations, most significantly the dictatorial regime of Rafael Trujillo between 16 August 1930 and 16 August 1938. As a member of the Organization of American States and the United Nations, the Dominican Republic is party to myriad legal treaties and covenants which propagate the human rights standards of the international community and have integrated the majority of these human rights directives into their domestic legislation.
The perpetual foreigner, forever foreigner or perpetual other stereotype is a racist or xenophobic form of nativism in which naturalized and even native-born citizens are perceived by some members of society as foreign because they belong to a minority ethnic or racial group. When citizenship has been granted and yet the group of people is persistently viewed as foreign, the term alien citizen has been also used to in some scholarship describe these groups.
Dominican Republic nationality law is regulated by the 2015 Constitution, Law 1683 of 1948, the 2014 Naturalization Law #169-14, and relevant treaties to which the Dominican Republic is a signatory. These laws determine who is, or is eligible to be, a citizen of the Dominican Republic. The legal means to acquire nationality and formal membership in a nation differ from the relationship of rights and obligations between a national and the nation, known as citizenship. Nationality in the Dominican Republic is typically obtained either on the principle of jus soli, i.e. by birth in the Dominican Republic; or under the rules of jus sanguinis, i.e. by birth abroad to a parent with Dominican nationality. It can also be granted to a permanent resident who has lived in the country for a given period of time through naturalization or for a foreigner who has provided exceptional service to the nation.
Stateless is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Michèle Stephenson and released in 2020. The film centres on the crisis of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, many of whom have been left stateless by the Dominican Republic's 2013 decision to strip citizenship from Haitian immigrants and their descendants.
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