Statelessness still a Zimbabwean challenge
Published: 19/Jul/2017
Source: ZimNews
By Timothy Moyo
Jairos Zhuwaki, is one such a person among thousands others without a clear history of origin, he has lost track of his own family tree and its branches too, and says he has no place to call home save for the Tongorara refugee camp, since migrating from Mozambique as a refugee several years ago.
His home, Tongogara Refugee Camp in Manicaland is home to more than 10,000 refugees and asylum seekers from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, and several other countries. Troubled with the lack of personal identity, Zhuwaki says he cannot fully enjoy his existence as a human being, as most of rights entitled to mankind constantly elude him.
Full of emotion, he nostalgically narrates how he ended up being at the camp; “I was forced to leave my home country after an insurgence of the Renamo (Matsanga) a number of years ago.”
Statelessness is when a person lives without any documentation to show their identity, and place of origin. Article 1(1) of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons defines a stateless person as: “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law.”
Read further: https://zimnews.net/stateless-refugees-in-zim/