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Maha%20Mamo%20defensora%20de%20los%20derechos%20humanos Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo - Maha Mamo assures that statelessness makes people's lives a permanent challenge

Publication date:

December 13 2021

Maha Mamo says statelessness makes people's lives a permanent challenge

SANTO DOMINGO. - During the first 30 years of his life, the human rights defender Maha mamo, born in Lebanon to Syrian parents, lived as stateless and that legal condition is deprived of his dreams of being basketball player professional and medical, but it also made it difficult for him to access to basic education and health.
 
In giving the opening lecture at the XI Dominican Conference on Gender Studies "Building Knowledge for Equality", Organized by the Center for Gender Studies Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), Mamo assured that not having documents makes people's lives a permanent challenge.
 
The international speaker advocated that all the countries of the world create policies that legally favor migrants, refugees and stateless people, and lamented that there are currently about 10 million people in the world without nationality.
 
Maha, born in 1988 as the second child of three, thought that the situation of her and her sister Souad and her brother Eddie, was unique. She was completely unaware of the term stateless, but said she knew she would fight until she and her siblings had documents.
 
She wrote to the Lebanese authorities to grant her nationality because she was born in that territory and was denied it because she was the daughter of Syrian parents. In Syria they did not give him recognition either because the marriage of his parents was illegal under the laws of that country because they are a Muslim woman and a Christian man, and “unfortunately in Syria a mother or father cannot declare their children if they do not there is a legally constituted marriage ”, Mamo told the audience present and those who followed the conference through INTEC's YouTube channel.
 
En 2014, after having sought help in most of the countries of the world, Brazil It was the only country to respond to her call for help, as she and her siblings were admitted to its territory as asylum seekers. A month after their stateless refugee status was recognized, his brother was killed in an assault at the age of 26. The Brazilian authorities allowed him to draw up a death record, although he died without a nationality. In 2018, the South American country, after changing its migration laws, included a whole section on statelessness, generating mechanisms to overcome it, for which it granted citizenship to Mamo.
 
About the Gender Studies Conference
 
The conference had as its central theme "Human Mobility, a gender perspective on the challenges and inequalities in the new migratory contexts: Trafficking in persons, Nationality and Refuge in the DR", in order to address and characterize the phenomenon of migration at the international and national level, focused on the consideration of the gender approach, human rights and the new migration governance in the Dominican Republic.
 
In his speech during the opening of the academic activity, the rector of INTEC, Julio Sanchez Marinez He specified that the Gender Study Center is an emblematic example of INTEC's commitment to contribute to the social transformation and sustainable development of the country through the training of socially responsible and professionally competent citizens, the development of culture, research and dissemination scientific and technological.
 
“Since its birth, in 1972, almost like a daring, still an incipient institution, a newborn, INTEC established two centers to channel its contributions and ties with society, the Center for Educational Studies (CEDE) and the Center for Studies and Technical Assistance (CEAT). The Center for Gender Studies is part of that tradition and has gained a position of which we are proud, thanks to the dedication, commitment and combativeness of its leaders and members throughout its fruitful career, in defense and promotion of human and social rights in general and gender equality in particular ”, he said.
 
Desiree del Rosario, Coordinator of the Center for Gender Studies, affirmed that being a migrant puts people in vulnerable conditions, even to access a health program. "Mobilizing and seeking better destinations and the aspiration that migration be with dignity must be a guaranteed right," he said.

Melecia Almonte, Vice Minister of Intersectoral Coordination of the Ministry of Women, He said that, given the changes caused by COVID, it is becoming increasingly relevant to present initiatives aimed at migrants and refugees, to guarantee their rights.

According to data published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), one in every 97 people in the world is affected by forced displacement. This represents one percent of humanity. The consequences of the humanitarian emergencies of our era are made even more serious by the fact that they coexist with a health emergency. When the world needs us to stay at home to control the spread of the new coronavirus, millions of families face situations of extreme vulnerability and have been forced to leave their homes.

While, Gabriel Gualano de GodoyUNHCR's chief of mission for the Dominican Republic, indicated that the United Nations works in a joint and complementary manner with the countries of the world, including the Dominican Republic, to promote the adoption of comprehensive protection and equitable development policies, without discrimination.

“If we work to leave no one behind, we have to ask ourselves who are the people who are being left the furthest behind. In many societies, women and girls face discrimination and violence every day, just because of their gender. During displacement, this problem increases. Women and girls represent around 50% of the refugee, internally displaced or stateless population ”.

An adequate response demands alliances to respond to the causes of displacement and undocumentation, as well as to reinforce the structural policies of equity, social protection and citizenship of these populations.

Recognition to Lourdes Contreras

Lourdes_Contreras_founder_of_the_Dominican_Conference_of_Studies_of_G%C3%A9nero_received%C3%B3_a_recognition Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo - Maha Mamo assures that statelessness makes people's lives a permanent challenge

El Center for Gender Studies designated the Dominican Conference on Gender Studies 2021 with the name of Lourdes Contreras in recognition of the work carried out by the teacher as coordinator of the Center for more than 20 years, for being a reference, and a person who has promoted the gender agenda in the country. "Her leadership constitutes an example of what a true Inteciana is, committed to a fair, diverse and egalitarian country," says the statement read by the dean of the Social Sciences and Humanities Area, Dalul Ordehi.

Contreras was the one who promoted, created and thought the Dominican Conference on Gender Studies as a space for dissemination and study in the field of gender.

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