The Council of Europe’s top human rights watchdog, Thomas Hammarberg, singled out the performance of the Czech Republic in his new report Human Rights of Roma and Travelers in Europe [pdf]. Released in late February, the Commissioner for Human Rights’ report highlights that an estimated 30 percent of Romani children in the Czech Republic are placed in “schools designed for pupils with mild mental disabilities, compared to two percent of their non-Roma counterparts.”

Commissioner Hammarberg reiterated his conclusion about the Czech Republic from his March 2011 country report:  “with thousands of Roma children effectively excluded from the mainstream education system in the Czech Republic and condemned to a future as second class citizens every year…..it is now time to speed up the implementation of the inclusive education agenda.”

He is not alone in his assessment.

A January 2012 study [pdf] by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) concluded that “in spite of a decision to progressively integrate disadvantaged students into mainstream schools” the placement of Romani students in “special schools” is “still very high.”

One of the OECD report’s recommendations is for more data collection contextualized according to socio-economic background, minority status, special needs, and income level of students to be able to inform policy regarding student outcomes.

Yet current data collection efforts aiming to get a better picture of the number of Romani children still caught in “special schools” (now renamed practical schools) has been hijacked. Practical school teachers have boycotted recent efforts by the Czech Ombudsman to collect fresh data on the numbers of Romani children still being taught in their schools. The teachers refuse the researchers access to the school grounds and to information about the ethnicity of enrolled students.

A lack of data disaggregated by ethnicity surely hinders the development of targeted programming decisions aimed at addressing discrimination in the education system. Yet such a concern presumes the existence of a cohesive strategy designed to promote inclusion in schools. The problem is two such inclusion strategies exist and it is unclear which one trumps. And, in the mean time, neither is being implemented in practice and neither has a clear funding source.

The lack of funding for these strategies, moreover, is not a function of a lack of available funds. European Union structural funds can be accessed by the Czech Republic to make the changes needed to transform the education to make it more inclusive. But in recent months, controversy has erupted around the Czech government’s use of these funds. In January 2012, the European Commission stopped the flow of money to the Czech education ministry—some 1.9 million Euros—after a December 2011 audit found serious irregularities in the way the money intended for educational projects was being spent and monitored.

It is time for the controversies to stop and serious reform efforts to start.  This is where the international community can help build the pressure for change.

This week, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers—the political body charged with overseeing the implementation of European Court judgments—will debate the Czech government’s record on pursuing inclusive education. Specifically, the Committee will look at the Czech Government’s efforts to implement the DH and Others v Czech Republic case, which was decided by the ECHR in November 2007.  This case was brought by 18 Romani children who challenged the disproportionate placement of Romani children into “special schools” on account of their ethnicity – and they won.  The court ordered the Czech government to end the discrimination against Romani children and redress insofar as possible its effects.

The committee will need to ask the hard questions of the Czechs: Why are international bodies reporting no change on the ground in schools almost five years after the DH judgment? When will it start funding and implementing a coherent policy on inclusive education? What is its plan to use structural funds better so that Romani children can see tangible benefits?

The Czech government will also come under the scrutiny of other states on the United Nations Human Rights Council in October, where its record in meeting its international human rights obligations will be assessed. Two of those obligations are to ensure non-discrimination and the right to education for all children. At the moment, the Czech government should get a fail grade on both.

The Czech government needs to live up to its legal obligations. It has shown itself unwilling to do so to date. But they are part of a community of states and laws which are committed to the key principles of equality, dignity, and respect.  This is why diplomats in Geneva, Brussels, and Strasbourg also need to use all the tools at their disposal—funding, peer reviews and bilateral pressure—to end the Czech government foot dragging and give Romani children a better chance in life.

Julek, now 21, was one of 18 children who took the Czech government to the European Court of Human Rights in 1999, challenging the practice of placing disproportionate numbers of Romani children into “special schools” (now renamed “practical schools”) where they, and children with disabilities, were segregated from their classmates and taught a limited curriculum. Twelve years later, Julek still suffers from being caught up in the practice, painfully aware of the limited job options that his lack of education has left him.

Julek ushers us through the kitchen and into a neat, amber-colored living room, where his two young sons sit on small plastic chairs watching cartoons. In the corner, a small wood burning furnace crackles and warms the house.

His wife, Jitka, fixes us coffee and Julek begins to tell us of his experience. As a child, he had caught pneumonia and missed a lot of classes. Instead of getting support from teachers to catch up on his studies when he got well, he was placed into a special school. There he languished, until his headmaster finally recognized that he belonged in mainstream education. Once he was transferred back, however, the school placed him two grades behind his classmates of the same age. He did not last much longer in formal schooling.

As Julek talks, his four-year-old son, also named Julek, beams as he sits down next to me and proudly plants his prized pet mouse in my hand to hold and pat with him. Three-year-old Roland, leans against his father and happily slurps on a small lollipop that his grandmother hands him as she walks in to join us after finishing work.

Julek and the 17 other children won the case—D.H. and others v Czech Republic—in November 2007. The European Court ordered the Czech government to pay a small amount in compensation to the individual children who were represented in the case, and also to put general measures in place to end the discrimination against Romani children and redress, as far as possible, its effects.

Yet little has changed in the last 12 years since the case first went to court—and Julek worries about his sons’ futures.

“I went to a special school and my brother is still in a “practical” school,” he says. I don’t want my sons to be placed there too.” Jitka vehemently nods her head in agreement.

As we leave, the younger Julek and Roland give my colleague, Jana, a “high five” and wave the rest of us goodbye. We organize to meet Julek again in the morning, when he will travel with us to Strasbourg to deliver the same message to the Committee of Ministers at the Council of Europe—the political body charged with making sure European Court judgments are respected.

Julek hopes that by telling his story, it will help people realize the magnitude of the problem with this practice, and propel change. He also knows change takes time—he’s been waiting 12 years—but realizes that his children don’t have that luxury. He wants them to have a better chance in life than he was given and hopes that the Committee of Ministers can help him give them that.

A good first step would be that the Committee ask the Czech government to provide fresh statistics, according to ethnicity, gender and disability, of children in “practical schools” and mainstream education. A second would be to require the Czech government to provide concrete examples of changes on the ground for children as a result of their National Action Plan for Inclusive Education. (Concerns exists that the plan’s implementation has stalled).

To achieve lasting change, the Czech government must begin to make steps to transform the way its education system treats Romani children. One specific advance would be to put support structures in place to ensure Romani children can succeed in mainstream schools. It’s also vital that the Czech government starts to combat the pervasive bullying Romani children suffer in mainstream schools, which leaves parents despairing and deciding to keep their children in the “safer” environment of “practical” schools. The government must undertake a major sensitization campaign with families and teachers in mainstream schools to underscore why inclusion is good for everyone.

To date, those key steps haven’t taken place—and without them, Julek’s dream of seeing his boys grow up in an inclusive, supportive school environment still remains elusive.

But his death cannot mean the end of the story for justice.  Qaddafi’s demise only further underscores the importance and urgency of capturing the two remaining fugitives from international justice—his son, Saif al-Islam, and his head of Military Intelligence, Colonel Abdullah Al-Senussi.

All three men were the target of arrest warrants issued in June by the International Criminal Court—the world’s only permanent court set up to deal with mass atrocities—after the United Nations Security Council became so concerned about the crackdown in Libya that it asked the ICC prosecutor to investigate. 

All three men are said to have planned a violent repression of demonstrators who were inspired by the Arab Spring revolutions in neighboring countries.  Saif al-Qaddafi  is alleged to have recruited foreign mercenaries to join Libyan security forces in order to quell dissent.  Al-Senussi purportedly controlled the security forces, which had opened machine gun fire on demonstrators once the protests began.  These killings prompted more demonstrations—and the government response grew more violent and systematic in response.  Saif even acknowledged the killings on Libyan television in February, stating that “those who had been killed are only hundreds.”  He continued to make public appearances with the aim, according to the ICC prosecutor, of maintaining fear among the population by reinforcing the regime’s willingness to fight to keep hold of its power. The ICC’s judges decided the prosecutor gave them enough evidence to bring the three before the court to answer the allegations against them.

Prosecution of the remaining two fugitives would contribute to realizing the hopes of the Security Council when it referred the crimes in Libya to the International Criminal Court in the first place: the maintenance of peace and security in the face of “gross and systematic violation of human rights.” An ICC prosecution, reinforced by a parallel process of national trials for subordinates accused of similar crimes, would help to re-establish the rule of law in the new Libya—currently tarnished by Qaddafi's apparently summary killing.

The Security Council had also recognized this would not be an easy task, and decided that the Libyan authorities—and other states—had to cooperate with the ICC to achieve this aim (a shorthand term for arresting its indictees and bringing them to court in The Hague).  This imperative remains.

Libya’s National Transitional Council had wanted to see Qaddafi tried at home.  His death avoids such  legal wrangling between the domestic and international justice forums.  But going forward, the Libyan justice system does have an important role to play in helping Libya transition from chaos—and Qaddafi's apparently summary killing—to the rule of law.  The national government must share the burden of accountability with the ICC by starting to plan for domestic trials to bring other high ranking leaders, as well as mid and lower level suspects to book for the widespread and systematic crimes that have taken place.   A focus on how to best share that load so that the victims will get their day in court should be a priority for both the ICC and the National Transitional Council.

The call was prompted by the November 2007 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that ordered the Czech government to stop channeling Roma children into dead-end "special" schools on account of their ethnicity.

The body charged with monitoring how the Czech government put that judgment into action—the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers—registered its disappointment with the pace of change on Friday. The committee said it is concerned that “considerable progress remains to be achieved on the ground” and wanted “concrete results achieved” for the next school year. It needed to see the Czech government “intensifying and if possible, speeding up the implementation” of its inclusive education action plan.

The Czech government, for its part, did not position itself well to fend off these calls for accelerated change or defend its own actions. It failed to give any more information to the committee before the meeting in Strasbourg last week, beyond acknowledging last December that an action plan existed, giving a description of its contents, and providing assurances that the plan was in motion.

At the meeting itself, the Czech government finally gave a statement to its peers on the committee—but in doing so, it gave a selective account of  the state of play in Czech Republic.

It highlighted its cooperation with an expert group of teachers, psychologists, and pedagogues to develop strategies for putting inclusive education into action. But it failed to mention that the expert group had actually imploded the week before. Fifty of those experts quit accusing the government of lacking the political will to move towards a truly inclusive education system.

The government statement also pointed to the passage of two decrees as “the most important” measures which demonstrated the government’s commitment to implementing the action plan, each of which will come into force in September for the next school year.

But these two decrees contain disturbing flaws. They fail, for example, to ensure that the parents of children who are channeled into “special schools” (which have been renamed “practical schools”) are told of the long term consequences this form of education will have on the child—such as severely limiting their chances of ever going back to mainstream school, or being qualified for a job if they graduate.

The Czech government did say it was “aware of the magnitude and of the urgency” of the issue and that its authorities “are intent on exerting their best efforts in order to solve it.” And yet the government’s actions do not seem to live up to its stated ambitions.

During the past year, the government has dismantled the policy department charged with addressing inclusive education; reformers inside the Ministry of Education have been pushed out or quit citing lack of political will; and a person considered hostile to the inclusive education agenda has been appointed as an advisor to the Education Minister himself.

The Committee of Ministers were right to be disappointed in the pace of change and the lack of information they had received about what the Czech government was actually doing to implement the 2007 court judgment,  D.H. and Others v Czech Republic. Unfortunately, Roma children remain the ones who continue to bear the brunt of the government’s failure to act. In September, we are still likely to see yet another wave of Roma children bundled off to dead-end schools.

At the time, in the late 1990s, Roma children in the Czech Republic were then 27 times more likely to be segregated from mainstream schools and channeled into “special education” than their non-Roma classmates.

In some parts of the Czech Republic, the statistics remain the same today. Thousands of Roma children who have been educated in “special schools” over the years have experiences similar to Julek’s: he is now unemployed at age 23, his opportunities radically limited by decisions taken when he was young.

This week, the Council of Europe has an opportunity to help change this situation, as it assesses the progress of the court case that Julek helped set in motion.  The Council’s top political body—the Committee of Ministers, which oversees the way that States transform judgments from Europe’s top human rights court into action on the ground—will assess whether the Czech government has done enough to try to change its education system to ensure it is more inclusive of Roma children like Julek.

Though it is too late for Julek to benefit from a transformed education system, he told a meeting in Prague recently that he hopes he can help change things for younger children. That was part of the reason why he joined with 17 other Roma children to file a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights in 2000.  Charging discrimination based on ethnicity, they argued that the disproportionate segregation of Roma children into special schools was a violation of the European Convention of Human Rights.  Seven years later, the court agreed.  The judges ordered the Czech government to pay compensation to the 18 Roma children in the case—D.H. and others v Czech Republic—and also to take general measures to make sure the education system did not continue to discriminate on the basis of ethnicity.

And yet, the Czech government has been dragging its feet—making it hard for the Committee of Ministers to make a positive finding this week when it meets to discuss the case.   More than three years after the judgment, the problem has not even begun to be remedied.  As Europe’s top human rights watchdog, Thomas Hammarberg, noted in his report on the Czech Republic in March this year: “There appear to have been hardly any changes on the ground….. Romani children continue to be assigned [to special schools] without justification, as a result of either misdiagnosis or direct enrollment in these schools.”

The Czech government did not give the Committee of Ministers any information about the efforts they have taken to transform the education system in the lead-up to this week’s meeting.  Unfortunately, this is largely because there is little to say: during the past year, the new government has slashed the staff devoted to inclusive education in the Ministry of Education, it has pushed out reformers inside the Ministry or the staff have quit citing lack of political will to make changes, and a person hostile to an inclusive education agenda has been appointed as a key advisor to the Education Minister.

The situation also took a further turn for the worse last week, when a key plank of the government’s plans imploded.  A group of sixty teachers, psychologists, doctors and other experts who had been brought on board to support  reforms all resigned, saying that the government lacked the political will to pursue an inclusive education agenda.  Their departure effectively takes the process back to square one, and largely unravels the government’s action plan in practice.

The Committee of Ministers needs to start increasing the pressure on the Czech government to reform.  The new school year starts in September—and unless something drastic changes, many more Roma children like Julek could be segregated and taught to a limited curriculum again on the basis of their ethnicity. The Committee of Ministers has the responsibility not to let that happen.

The Committee will make a decision on this case by next week.  This decision needs to:

• Identify the obstacles to pursuing an inclusive education agenda in the Czech Republic, and help the Czech government work out ways to overcome them
• Offer technical assistance and advice to ensure the Czech government has the tools and resources it needs to implement the D.H. judgment
• Work with the government to make a plan to set a time frame and benchmarks to implement the D.H. judgment
• Keep the D.H. case on the agenda for debate at its November 2011 session.

If not, in the words of Thomas Hammarberg, another generation of of Roma children will  be “condemned to a future as second-class citizens.”

At the same time as the celebrations were taking place, a different—but all too familiar—reality played out only miles away. Police and council workers were evicting Roma families from an encampment in the London Borough of Sutton. One activist was knocked down by a bulldozer and hospitalized.

Four decades later, what has changed? Have the hopes for respect for Roma rights been realized?

At one level, the answer is an unequivocal yes. In Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights has issued a series of judgments recognizing and expanding the rights of Roma to be free from discrimination and violence. In the 2005 decision of Nachova v. Bulgaria, for example, the court found that Bulgarian police failed to investigate whether discrimination played a role in the murder of two Roma men, and told the government to change its police practices.

In Stoica v. Romania, the court addressed the case of a 14-year-old Roma boy who was beaten by police while standing outside a bar. In 2008, the court held that the violence against him by Romanian police was racially motivated and violated the European Convention of Human Rights.

Over the same period, the European Union dramatically enhanced the legal prohibition against ethnic or racial discrimination (through adopting the Race Equality Directive, for example, which requires European Union countries to comply with its principles of equal treatment of all persons regardless of racial or ethnic origin).

The revolution in Brussels and Strasbourg, however, has not been matched on the ground. Despite the legal gains, the situation of Roma across Europe has remained largely the same. Discrimination remains widespread, and while violence has subsided in some countries, it has increased in others.

During the past two years in Italy and France, for example, Roma still face the type of violence and arbitrary evictions, legitimized through hastily passed laws, that their counterparts did in the 1970s as the First World Congress was taking place. More generally, the vast majority of Roma on the continent remain economically and politically marginalized.

The gap between law and practice is nowhere more evident than in the Czech Republic. In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights issued a decision in D.H. and Others v. Czech Republic, recognizing that the systemic segregation of Roma children into “special” education for children with disabilities constituted a form of indirect discrimination. It ordered the Czech Republic to fix the problem and ensure that Roma children were welcomed into mainstream schools in an inclusive environment.

More than three years have passed since then, and no changes are in sight. As the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg noted in his March 2011 report on the Czech Republic, “there appear to have been hardly any changes on the ground” since the DH decision was handed down. Still today, in some parts of the country, Roma children are 27 times more likely than their Czech schoolmates to be placed in a school with a substandard curriculum that limits their opportunities and chances at getting a good job.

Hammarberg further challenged the Czech government to stop condemning Roma children to “a future as second-class citizens” and to demonstrate “a clear change of direction already with the next intake of children in the 2011-2012 school year.”

But enrollment for the new school year has already started, and the Czech government has, in effect, done nothing to remedy the situation. It estimates that it will not make any practical changes until 2014—which means three more years will go by with Roma children improperly placed in classes with limited curricula.

This situation is particularly egregious given the Czech government currently holds the presidency of the Decade of Roma Inclusion—an initiative of 12 governments, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, as well as Romani community groups, to improve Roma rights and welfare. As its presidency comes to an end in June, the Czech government needs to explain its failure to promote equal education inside its own borders—wasting the untapped potential of Roma children.

The Czech government is not alone within Europe in its failure to promote Roma inclusion. International Roma Day should serve as a reminder that the hopes and dreams of the activists at the Roma Congress in 1971 are still a long way from being realized.

Next month, Europe’s premier political body charged with promoting human rights has an opportunity to make sure that children like Jofranka (not her real name) have a shot at getting a regular education, without discrimination, alongside the majority of non-Roma Czech children. When the Council of Europe’s key decision-making body, the Committee of Ministers, meets on March 8-10, education for Roma children in the Czech Republic will be high on the agenda—and the Committee must demand a fast U-turn by the Czech government to fix the problem.

At the moment, Roma children in some parts of the country are 27 times more likely than non-Roma students to be placed in “special” or “practical” schools with an inferior curriculum. Worse still, the Czech government, by its own admission, has no plans to make concrete changes to remedy this situation until 2014. In short, this means that at least three more years will pass before any Roma child will benefit from plans to integrate Roma children into mainstream schools. For many Roma children, this change will come far too late. Every year that goes by will make it harder for them to catch up with their peers in regular classes.

That the Czech government has no intention of implementing its inclusive education agenda until 2014 is even more striking when placed against the backdrop of the 2007 European Court of Human Rights judgment—DH and others v Czech Republic. The decision in the DH case, which was brought by 18 Roma children including Jofranka, held that the differential treatment of Roma children had no justification and amounted to discrimination under the European Convention for Human Rights.

The Court directed the country to compensate the victims and to take measures to end the violation. Noting the historical discrimination against Roma in the country, the Court said the Czech Republic had a duty not only to end the segregation of Roma children, but to design an education system that “help[s Roma] to integrate into the ordinary schools and develop the skills that would facilitate life among the majority population.”

The Committee of Ministers is the top European body charged with ensuring the Court’s decisions are respected. Three months ago, the Open Society Justice Initiative, along with the European Roma Rights Center and the Greek Helsinki Monitor, submitted information to the Committee of Ministers ahead of its last meeting about the status of the DH judgment. We highlighted that the situation in the Czech Republic remains essentially unchanged since the Court handed down its judgment in 2007, with no concrete steps taken by the government to remedy the problem, nor plans to do so in the near future.

Disturbingly, we had also found that the Czech Ministry of Education, tasked with ensuring inclusive education, had taken backward steps over the past six months, with its last Director of the Department of Special Education and Equal Opportunities, Viktor Hartos, quitting after declaring that no political will existed inside the Education Ministry to institute genuine reforms. In his October 2010 resignation letter, Mr. Hartos stated:

As the team leader I cannot identify, either professionally or personally, with the current approach of the Education Ministry toward fulfilling the obligations flowing from the condemnatory verdict of the European Court from 2007. No genuine effort is being made to contribute toward resolving this serious problem that affects society as a whole; rather, there is a tendency to be satisfied with mere formalities.

At its November 2010 meeting, the Council of Ministers heard also from the Czech Republic, which described its national action plan for inclusive education. But its submission was not enough for the Committee—lingering questions remained about the progress of implementation of these inclusive education plans and other general measures to protect Roma children from discrimination in education. They asked the Czech government to come back in three months—March 2011—to give them a better answer.

The answer will come far too late for Jofranka, who, when Amnesty International caught up with her in 2009, had been channeled into a vocational school—one of the only options available for her after years in a “special school.” At that time, Jofranka was worried about her chances of getting a job as a baker because of discrimination against Roma.

But the answer—and practical actions to back it up—should be a top priority for the Czech government, which currently holds the Presidency of the Decade of Roma Inclusion (a political commitment by European governments, civil society and international organizations to improve the socioeconomic status and social inclusion of Roma).

All children deserve a shot at a good education, one which is inclusive in design and scope. The Czech government must speed up the pace and make sure that Roma and other marginalized children are mainstreamed into regular schools with the support they need, starting with the next school year beginning in autumn 2011. And the Committee of Ministers needs to act firmly to make sure this happens.

Sebastian Kohn. Photo: Open Society Foundations

Around the world, there are an estimated 5 million children without access to citizenship. The impact is enormous. These “stateless” children are denied the basic services most of us take for granted—education and health care, for starters—and most grow up in extreme poverty. Without rights, they are left vulnerable to a wide range of dangers, including trafficking and exploitation. And yet the problem remains largely invisible.

Sebastian Kohn, the Justice Initiative’s expert on global statelessness issues, is committed to changing that. This year, he will be traveling the diplomatic circuit and making the case for a robust new framework of legal protections for children.

In early February, he was preparing a formal presentation before the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child—the UN body in charge of interpreting children’s rights. We sat down with him shortly before he left for Geneva.

What made you care about this issue?

The first time I encountered statelessness was when I spoke to a very good friend of mine who told me about his experience moving from the Soviet Union to the United States when he was four years old. The Soviet Union, at that time, systematically deprived everyone of their citizenship—of their Soviet nationality—when they left to live abroad. So when he arrived in the US, it took almost a decade for him and his family to acquire American nationality. He was in his early teens when he became a US citizen. Luckily for him, he had refugee status at the same time, so he didn’t have any problems attending school, he had access to health care, and even got travel documents from the US government.

But since I started working on statelessness globally, I’ve learned that this is certainly not the case in most other places. Many children are born stateless or they become stateless very early on, and as a result many grow up in poor and miserable conditions, with no, or very limited, access to education and health care, some of them are actually vulnerable to trafficking or other forms of exploitation because of their statelessness. Many children also get deported or detained for long periods of time simply because they are not nationals of the place where they find themselves.

So apart from your friend, Sebastian, have you met any particular children who really highlighted to you why kids need to have a nationality?

Well, over the last few years I met quite a few children who struggle with statelessness on a daily basis, though they are not always aware that they are stateless. I recently visited a couple of villages in southern Mauritania where previously expelled Mauritanians, who have now returned to the country, live. Most of the kids in these villages were not actually born in Mauritania. They were born in exile—most of them in Senegal or Mali—and they have returned quite recently with their parents. The Mauritanian government had promised to restore their nationality when they returned. Currently though, at least half of the people I met haven’t yet received recognition from the government of their nationality—so for all practical purposes these people are still stateless. Some of them weren’t able to leave the village they lived in because they didn’t have ID cards. Without IDs, they couldn’t get past the police checkpoints between the village and the nearest town, which is only really three kilometers away. They are basically stuck there—so the consequences for these children is that they have essentially no freedom of movement; many of them weren’t attending school—there are few if any schools in many of these villages—and their access to health care is entirely inadequate.

For these Mauritanian children, then, the consequences of being stateless are quite dire. Do you think this is typical of the experience of a lot of stateless children around the world?

I think what sets the Mauritanian children apart from many other children who are stateless is the cause of the phenomenon. They were born in exile and their parents had been expelled from the country. That’s not the case with most other stateless children.

Having said that, I think the consequences of statelessness are very similar regardless of what populations you look at. I’ve seen cases of stateless kids—whether it be Nubian children in Kenya, or children of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic, or Rohingya kids in Thailand—and they all grow up in poverty, extreme poverty, with little or no education opportunities—especially after primary school level. In places like Kenya, we’ve found that while children often do get to go to primary school, the problems really start at the secondary school level. That can have really severe consequences for their future employment opportunities. Many of them don’t get health care—sometimes because they can’t afford to pay the fees that are applied to non-nationals. And as I mentioned before, there’s quite a bit of evidence, in South East Asia in particular, of a connection between statelessness and trafficking or other forms of exploitation. This has affected stateless children from the Hill Tribes in Thailand for example.

In addition, quite often the consequences of statelessness begin before the child is born. A lot of stateless women don’t have access to pre-natal care, they frequently give birth in dangerous places, such as in the slums. Also, stateless babies very often don’t receive all the necessary immunizations. So it is a really tough start for many of them.

I always assumed that children automatically got the nationality of the place where they were born. Isn’t that correct?

You know, I speak to a lot of people who think that’s the case, but in most countries in the world, you do not get citizenship just because you are born there. In fact, citizenship is frequently primarily based on the citizenship of your parents. So this means that if your parents are stateless, you are not going to inherit a nationality from them. Many children with stateless parents, as a result, become stateless themselves. A further complication is that in many places, women aren’t allowed to transfer nationality to their children. Now this may not be a problem in terms of citizenship for the child if the father has a nationality. But in many places we find that women are married to foreigners or stateless men, and even though they have nationality themselves, they can’t actually transfer it to their children, who then may become stateless.

So once a child is born stateless or becomes stateless, how difficult is it for them to acquire a nationality?

SK: It really depends on the country. There are certainly some best practice countries around the world where you have expedited processes for the children to acquire nationality even if they weren’t born in the country. Sometimes, like in Argentina, it’s a matter of having lived in the country for a few years. In some places though, such as the Central African Republic, the residence requirement can be as long as 35 years. In other places, you have to belong to a particular ethnic or religious group to naturalize. This is the case in places like Liberia and Saudi Arabia. So there are all sorts of bars that children can face. The really best practice, though, is when a child who would otherwise be stateless automatically acquires the nationality of the country of birth, even though in general, nationality in that country is given on the basis of bloodline.

So best practice, then, is that children who would otherwise be stateless acquire the nationality of the country in which they were born. Doesn’t the law say that this should be the case anyway?

In theory that should be the standard in much of the Americas, Africa and in Europe where regional treaties set out this rule. Unfortunately, that is not the standard that a lot of states have adopted in their national laws, and of course there are a large number of states that fall outside these regional conventions. There are protections in other international instruments, like the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child that guarantee that children have ‘a right to acquire a nationality’ but don’t actually go into the details of what this means in practice.

Do the details matter?

Well, they do because in the absence of details, states don’t feel that they need to adopt these standards.  This is why you do see better practices in states where regional mechanisms provide more specific standards, like the European Convention on Nationality, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. Unfortunately because children’s right to nationality is still quite vague under the two other international instruments, a lot of states have not translated it, or transposed it into their national laws.

So what are you doing to try to make statelessness less of a problem for children?

In general, the Justice Initiative engages in a combination of litigation, advocacy, research and capacity building to try to address statelessness among both children and adults. With respect to children, we believe that 2011 really represents an opportunity to address this problem—in part because it is the 50^th anniversary of the 1961 Statelessness Reduction Convention, which provides a right for children who would otherwise be stateless to acquire the nationality of the state of birth, just like the regional instruments I’ve been talking about. Now we want to push the issue further because this Convention is poorly ratified. First, we want the Committee on the Rights of the Child to more explicitly interpret their Convention to say that the "right for children to acquire a nationality" actually means that children who would otherwise be stateless should acquire the nationality of the country of their birth. We also want them to set some kind of minimum standards for naturalization of stateless children. In addition, we want to establish the principle that no children—in fact no people at all—should be arbitrarily deprived of their nationality, and that people shouldn’t be denied access to nationality on the ground of their race, gender, religion or any other status.

So you would like lawmakers and diplomats to take this issue very seriously, you consider that this is not an issue they have explored deeply enough, and that changes they could make would have an impact. Can you tell me, what type of impact could these changes have?

That’s exactly right. We want states and we want international bodies to really understand and begin to tackle this problem. We acknowledge that by and large, the state has a sovereign right to decide who its nationals are, but this sovereign right is limited by the rights of individuals under human rights law. The rights of individuals include non-discrimination, the right to acquire a nationality for children, freedom of movement and a host of other things, and we really think there is a lot more that governments and their diplomats, international organizations and NGOs can do to advance these rights.

In terms of impact, clearer norms would help law makers when they are drafting new laws. For the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is particularly important since it’s been ratified by all but two countries in the world, which provides an opportunity to litigate the Convention in national courts, and to raise the rights in the Convention with policy makers. It provides a basis for lobbying and advocacy to change national laws, and we believe that ultimately when the Committee on the Rights of the Child gets an individual communications mechanism, this will provide an additional avenue where this right can be enforced.

And if these changes are made, what does that mean for the children who are stateless, or could be stateless in the future?

We really hope that some of the consequences of statelessness could be addressed. Of course, we appreciate that some issues will take longer to deal with, such as the poverty problem. I mean, some of the communities I’ve met live in poverty because this is a multigenerational issue and it might quite possibly take a generation or two to allow people to get out of this situation. But there are other things that could change immediately, such as access to health care when you need it, or access to education. These are pretty much straight forward government decisions. It’s not a process that needs to take decades and decades.

So children could benefit immediately if changes were made?

We believe so. Children could benefit immediately to the extent that governments take these changes seriously, and to the extent that they lead to honest and meaningful changes in both policy and law.

For more information, please see our fact sheet on children and nationality or peruse a detailed overview of Sebastian's argument for the UN.

As the glamor and intrigue continue today in the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor—with a Hollywood actress and a supermodel’s former agent testifying in The Hague about diamonds and a diva—the view from Sierra Leone looks decidedly less chic.

Charred buildings lined the street going east out of Freetown, the country’s capital, with young men lingering on the roadside, despite the heavy rain.

“See those boys?” asked Desmond, my taxi driver and an evangelical pastor.  “A lot of them were child soldiers. I have no pity for them.”

We were weaving through traffic on the same road that Sierra Leonean rebels had marched down eleven years ago, burning houses, looting, and terrorizing civilians as they launched an attack on the city in 1999.

Desmond started recalling his memories of the brutal 11-year conflict. He remembered rebels splitting open the stomachs of pregnant women to settle a bet on the sex of the unborn baby; frightened men and women jostling to sleep in fresh graves among dead bodies because the cemetery was the safest place to be at night; the fear he felt during the curfew while scavenging for food for his family.

“You can’t even imagine the things they did—they were on drugs, it made them crazy, they did not even know what they were doing,” he said, shaking his head in disgust.

We arrived at the house of Jusu Jarkah, a double amputee whose arms were cut off below the elbow during the war—a signature crime committed by rebel forces. Jarkah said he hopes that Charles Taylor will be found guilty of the 11 charges he faces, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. Taylor is being prosecuted for his alleged role in supporting rebels in a campaign to inflict terror, destabilize the country, and get rich from Sierra Leone’s diamond wealth.

Jarkah also wants to go to The Hague to see the verdict handed down, which is expected next year. He’s been there once before to watch the trial, and encountered Taylor through the glass window of the courtroom.

“Taylor looked at me and I held up my arms to show him what the rebels did to me—he just turned his head and looked away,” Jarkah said.  “He did not want to acknowledge it.”

Jarmah had followed the testimony of supermodel Naomi Campbell last week, when she said she had received “dirty little pebbles” after a charity dinner hosted by former South African president, Nelson Mandela in September 1997. She had assumed the pebbles were rough diamonds from Charles Taylor, though she did not know who the two men were who woke her that night to give her the gift.

(Prosecutors hoped Campbell’s story would strengthen their allegations that Taylor exchanged weapons for diamonds, as the dinner took place a month after rebels allegedly delivered him diamonds, and a month before a weapons shipment landed in Sierra Leone.)

Jarkah said he was pleased she told her story because it brought attention to the issue of blood diamonds and “the activities of Taylor during the war.” He pointed to the example of Kono, a diamond rich district in the country’s east. There, he said, shipments of diamonds would be flown out to Liberia, and the same helicopter would return back to the country with weapons.

Taylor, however, has denied all charges against him and has said he neither received diamonds from the rebels nor supplied them with weapons.

In the lead-up to Campbell’s appearance last Thursday, young men also debated the issues behind the supermodel’s testimony while I passed through Kono district.

Sitting on a long bench on the verandah of a ramshackle house in the diamond-rich town of Small Sefadu, a heated exchange broke out among the youth, some of whom were former child soldiers. They had not heard of the supermodel, nor that she was coming to testify. But sitting in midst of a town overtaken by rebels—with burned out houses all around them—their views on Taylor’s alleged exchange of diamonds for weapons warmed up.

“Liberian rebels were here—they were sent by Charles Taylor,” one said. “They captured many people here and forced them to work in the [diamond] mines without feeding them and in terrible conditions.”

Another disagreed that Taylor was behind the crimes.

“There is no proper evidence for Charles Taylor—we never saw him here,” he said.  “So it is our Sierra Leonean brothers who did this.”

“Let them try Taylor for Liberia’s war and let’s blame our own brothers for ours.”

Today, actress Mia Farrow and Campbell’s former agent, Carole White, testified about that night in 1997 when the alleged diamond gift was given. As they did so, the world again focused—fleetingly—on the Taylor trial and the horrific crimes committed during Sierra Leone’s long war.

But for those who lived through it, the reminders of the crimes are constant and everywhere. Only time will tell whether Taylor will be held responsible for them or not.

Naomi Campbell is one of three high profile witnesses that prosecutors have called to testify as they re-open their case at the Special Court for Sierra Leone this Thursday. The actress Mia Farrow and Campbell's former agent, Carole White, are due to take the witness stand on Monday next week. Prosecutors say that the evidence these three women may provide could be crucial in helping them shore up a theory that ties Taylor to brutal crimes committed during the civil war that raged in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002.

Taylor has been accused of supporting and controlling rebel forces in neighboring Sierra Leone as they unleashed mayhem on a terrified population, using drugged-up child soldiers to rape, loot, and murder their way across the country, hacking off the limbs of men, women, and children to mark their path. Prosecutors say Taylor not only made no effort to stop or punish these crimes when he was in a position to do so, but actively helped plan the atrocities with rebels in order to terrorize the population, destabilize the country, and benefit financially from Sierra Leone's diamond wealth. Taylor has dismissed the charges as "lies."

Campbell's testimony is important, prosecutors say, because she may be able to link Taylor to a central allegation in the case: that he provided rebels with weapons in exchange for diamonds. They claim that in 1997, Sierra Leonean rebels (who by then had ousted their government) visited Taylor in Liberia and brought him a stash of diamonds, which they hoped he would use to buy them arms and ammunition during his trip to South Africa the following month.

And here is where the president of Liberia and the three ladies’ paths intersect: when Taylor traveled to South Africa in September 1997, he attended a dinner hosted by Nelson Mandela, at which he met Naomi Campbell, along with Mia Farrow and Carol White. This meeting is undisputed.

But the story of what happened in South Africa is not. According to the prosecution’s story, Taylor was smitten with the supermodel and had his men wake Campbell up that night and give her some of the rebels’ diamonds. The rest of the gems were allegedly used to buy a shipment of weapons which arrived in Sierra Leone in October 1997.

Mia Farrow has said that Campbell told her of the encounter the next morning; White claims that she was there when the men arrived and saw six small uncut blood diamonds given to Campbell on a crumpled piece of paper.

The prosecutors hope that Campbell’s testimony will not only to connect Taylor directly with these blood diamonds, but also to undermine his credibility. During his time on the stand, the former president consistently denied ever owning, much less trading, diamonds, save for a few pieces of personal jewelry.

Taylor has derided the prosecutors' story about that night as "total, total nonsense."

His witnesses have gone even further in challenging the prosecutors' theory.  This month, defense witness Issa Sesay, a former rebel leader serving a 52-year jail sentence for his role in the Sierra Leonean atrocities, denied that the rebels gave Taylor diamonds, and said that Taylor had nothing to do with the arms shipment that arrived in Sierra Leone after his trip to South Africa in 1997. Instead, Sesay testified that the rebels used money given to them by Libyan leader, Muammar Ghadaffi, to buy the weapons that arrived in October; other rebel commanders transported them, and Sesay then traveled to pick them up.

Ultimately, the judges will have to decide which version of events they believe, given the evidence presented by both sides since the trial began in 2008.

Over 13 months, the prosecution presented amputation victims, who told how rebels had mutilated them. A traumatized mother described the horror of discovering that the bag of severed heads, which rebels had forced her to carry, contained those of her own children. One of Taylor's fighters has told of eating human livers, burying pregnant women alive, and placing the heads of vanquished enemies on pikes at roadblocks while working in Taylor's employ. Witnesses have described deliveries of mayonnaise jars full of diamonds from rebels and recounted orders that Taylor radioed through in response, to attack or fortify certain towns in Sierra Leone.

Taylor, meanwhile, has denied all the allegations against him. He presented an alternative version of events in which he, as a statesman and a peacemaker, fell victim to a Western conspiracy to make him a scapegoat for Sierra Leone's woes. While admitting to early contact with neighboring rebels during the country's 11-year war, Taylor has denied any relationship with them after 1996 (which is when the crimes for which he's been indicted allegedly took place) except to negotiate peace—which contact he made at the behest of other West African leaders.

No matter what Naomi Campbell says on Thursday, her appearance will doubtless ensure that more people know about this trial, find out about the horrific crimes and suffering in Sierra Leone, and perhaps are surprised that even presidents can be called to account before the law—and get a fair trial—if they are suspected of war crimes.

For daily reports on the Charles Taylor Trial and further background, see www.charlestaylortrial.org.