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LUSAKA. — Zambia’s founding president Kenneth Kaunda has confirmed joining more than 20 other international celebrities and world opinion leaders in pushing for an end to statelessness, the United Nations refugee agency said in a statement e-mailed to Xinhua yesterday.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Zambia said the 90-year-old Kaunda confirmed his support of the fight against statelessness.
On November 4, the UNHCR launched a global “I belong” campaign aimed at ending within 10 years the problem of statelessness — a devastating legal limbo for the millions of people worldwide who are not citizens of any state and lack nationality and the protection of their human and civil rights that goes with it.
According to the statement, Kaunda has joined other celebrities and world opinion leaders such as Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Angelina Jolie, among others, in the campaign.
Kaunda, who was Zambia’s first president and ruled for 27 years from 1964 to 1991, said in the statement that he was in full support of the UNHCR’s actions against statelessness.
“Statelessness can mean a life without education, without medical care or legal employment . . . a life without the ability to move freely, without prospects or hope. Statelessness is inhuman. We believe it is time to end this injustice,” the statement said.
According to UNHCR figures, at least 10 million people worldwide are currently stateless and that a baby is born stateless every 10 seconds.
UNHCR’s campaign has been launched amid signs of a shift in international attitudes surrounding statelessness, such as the increase in the number of state parties to the two statelessness treaties — the UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
Currently, the number of accessions stand at 144 from 100 three years ago. — Xinhua.
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