Member news: protecting human rights in the Dominican Republic

InterAction members Church World Service, Jesuit Refugee Service USA and Refugees International have partnered with several other organizations to protect the rights of Dominican Republic citizens.

The Dominican Republic has instituted a retroactive denationalization policy that strips Dominican citizenship from citizens of Haitian descent. According to Melanie Teff, senior advocate at Refugees International, “The retroactive application of this new Dominican law is forbidden by the American Convention on Human Rights, to which the government of the Dominican Republic is a party.”

The Conference on Statelessness and the Right to Nationality in the Dominican Republic, which will examine the legality of these actions, will be Wednesday, Oct. 26, at the Georgetown University Law Center’s Human Rights Institute. The dialogue will extend the whole week between human rights leaders, Dominican advocates, the U.S. administration, Congress and policymakers.

For more information, including the conference agenda and a joint statement by the coalition, see the CWS press release.