STATE MIGRATION SERVICE OF TURKMENISTAN AND UNHCR HOLD ONLINE BRIEFING

The State Migration Service of Turkmenistan and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) held online briefing on the anniversary of global #iBelong Campaign to End Statelessness.

Representatives of the State News Agency of Turkmenistan (TDH), the State Committee on Television, Radio Broadcasting and Cinematography, the State Publishing Service, newspapers and magazines, as well as the country's official websites were invited to participate in the online meeting.

In 2014, UNHCR launched the #IBelong Campaign with the objective to work with the governments, civil society and other relevant actors towards eradication of statelessness within ten years, by 2024.

In frames of the briefing, the UNHCR Office for Central Asia presented an overview of the results achieved by the countries of the region in the framework of this global campaign, emphasizing the leading position of Turkmenistan successfully carries out large-scale work to address the problem of statelessness.

Among the main international treaties and conventions on humanitarian issues, which our state has joined to are the UN Conventions relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Reduction of Statelessness, which still serve as the basis for international legal efforts to address statelessness.

In order to ensure the protection of rights and provide assistance to stateless persons, Turkmenistan has taken a number of important steps in recent years. Among them are the implementation of the norms of the international humanitarian law into national legislation, the organization of large representative forums of global importance, as well as the holding of large-scale humanitarian actions and events within the framework of the Global Action Plan.

Turkmenistan’s government adopted a National Action Plan (NAP) to End Statelessness by 2024 aiming at resolving the existing statelessness cases and putting in place adequate safeguards for stateless prevention, including the establishment of the stateless status determination procedures.

According to the State Migration Service of Turkmenistan, since 2011, an estimated 23,000 refugees and stateless people have been granted Turkmen nationality

During the meeting, it was emphasized that UNHCR welcomed a new law in Turkmenistan which will help ensure that all children born in the country will have their births registered. The Law on Civil Status Acts, which entered in to force in July, will help prevent new cases of statelessness arising for children born to people who are undocumented or whose nationality is undetermined.

During the meeting, special emphasis was placed on the role of the media to cover the issues of citizenship and statelessness. In order to encourage this work, UNHCR announced the competition among journalists who can submit their videos and published articles on this topic.

http://turkmenistan.gov.tm/_eng/?id=15333