Sovereignty and Social Justice: The ‘Haitian Problem’ in the Dominican Republic

IntroductionTHE ISSUE OF DOMINICAN SOVEREIGNTY with regard to the rights of those of Haitian parentage seeking to secure Dominican nationality came to the fore recently in the case of Haitian rights activist Sonia Pierre. The Dominican Central Electoral Board produced evidence that Pierre's parents obtained citizenship for their daughter, born on a sugar plantation in the Dominican Republic in 1963, by irregular means - that is, with forged documents. Legislator Vinicio A. Castillo Seman invoked the United Nations Assembly Resolution 869 IX General Assembly of 4 December 1975, Article 8, to the effect that the revocation of nationality can be justified in the cases in which it is proven that citizenship was obtained through fraud or false statements. Pierre, argued Castillo Seman, would not remain stateless as a result of the revocation, insofar as the Haitian constitution guarantees Haitian nationality to children of Haitian parents regardless of the place of birth. Confirming or consolidating Pierre's claim to Dominican nationality, he asserted, would set a dangerous precedent oi jus soli, or citizenship based on the territory of birth, for all Haitians seeking to obtain Dominican citizenship through similar channels.Allowing citizenship based on forged documentation would send the wrong message of "Entren to", said Castillo Seman, using the phrase coined by legislator Ramon Alburquerque: "Open the gates, all are welcome." He emphasised furthermore that "Mrs Pierre, her defenders and powerful nations (that do not want a single Haitian in their own vast territories), want to abolish, diminish and contract our laws and our sovereignty to draft immigration policies. They want to claim, as they have been claiming, that anyone who can cross the border, be born or say they were born here, that Haitians can obtain their nationality with fake statements through forged declarations and with the last names of Dominican parents." Haitian immigrants in Florida, Castillo Seman pointed out, do not enjoy such privilege; why should they in the Dominican Republic? To allow such to happen on Hispaniola would be to "officialise" an illegitimate means of obtaining Dominican nationality and would lead to grave widespread consequences.1What Castillo Seman did not include in his statement, however, is reference to the barriers to achieving legal status for Haitians living in the Dominican Republic that make it difficult to distinguish between those who are Dominican-born and have a birthright to such status and those who are truly living there in transit, either because they have temporary work permits or are working in the underground economy. As we shall elaborate further on, these barriers to legal status have included the following: a) the refusal of the Dominican government to acknowledge the legitimacy of birth certificates that it issued to Dominican-born Haitian children in the past; b) the refusal of the Dominican government to issue birth certificates to Dominican-born Haitian children in the first place; c) the charging of exorbitant fees for birth certificates, which are nearly impossible for Haitian or Haitian-Dominican families to afford; and d) the forcing of persons of Haitian descent out of the country through mass deportations that disallow time for gathering their belongings, including papers that might provide evidence of legal documentation. It is for these reasons and partially in response to pressure from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that the vice-president of the Dominican Supreme Court of Justice ruled in Pierre's favour in 2007. At issue here is not whether Pierre's documents were originally forged, but that the Dominican government had an interest in declaring them illegitimate so as not to set a precedent for granting legal status to Dominican-born persons of Haitian descent.Despite the Inter-American Court of Human Rights' ruling, children of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic continue to face discrimination in birth registration practices and barriers to citizenship. …