West Africa to fight statelessness with world’s first action plan
Published: 8/May/2017
Source: Reuters
DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – West Africa has become the first region in the world to adopt an action plan to end statelessness, aiming to help more than one million people without a nationality gain identity papers with new laws and better data, human rights experts said on Monday.
Stateless people, sometimes referred to as legal ghosts, are not accepted as citizens by any country, which means they are denied basic rights – leaving many unable to work or access healthcare – and are vulnerable to exploitation and traffickers.
State officials and representatives of the regional bloc ECOWAS and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR met in Gambia to adopt a plan to improve the lives of at least one million people thought to be stateless, or at risk of statelessness, in West Africa.
Read further: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-westafrica-stateless-idUSKBN18420I