PRIME MINISTER ADDRESSES THE EU CARIFORUM

Notes for the Prime Minister

Interface with  EU/Cariforum Members

Brussels

11 June 2015

I wish to welcome your team to this dialogue.

This political dialogue has had a long gestation period.

You will know that there has been a frank exchange of views prior to our coming here on the question of human rights and the view of the EU with regard to the Dominican Republic and its decisions on citizenship matters in the DR.

We agreed on a formula on how these discussions can take place and in what context.

In my letter to the high level dated 1 June to the High Level Representative Fredericka Mogherini, best viagra mind I said the following:

The Caribbean Community continues to be gravely concerned by the treatment meted out to Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic.  This long standing discriminatory treatment has been exacerbated by the ruling on nationality of the Dominican Republic Constitutional Court of September 2013 which arbitrarily stripped Dominicans of Haitian descent of their Dominican nationality leaving some 200, viagra sale unhealthy 000 persons stateless, and by the resulting legislation put in place to implement the judgment of the constitutional court.  These distressing and discriminatory developments that violate the human rights obligations and commitments willingly contracted by the Dominican state have been condemned by the Caribbean Community and a wide range of countries, pharm national and international organizations and human rights and civil society groups.  In Judgment of  22 October 2014, the Inter American Court of Human Rights called for the nullifying of all the dispositions resulting from the ruling on nationality and for the reversal of the ruling itself.

There has been no staisfactory response from the Dominican Republic.  Instead the law that was passed, meant to resolve the situation did not address the masses of the people who were ex post facto stripped of a citzienship which they believed they had and with which they had grown up and lived in the Domincan Republic.

This in our view should not be conflated with the issue of migraiton.  Migration is a bilateral issue and we are satsified that Haiti and the Domican Repubic are ad idem on issues relating to that matter.

This is much broader in scope and more fundamental.  It represents the stripping of the nationality of people who now are stateless and without status in a land where they  had those rights up to the court ruling.

That is offensive to all known human rights standards and the simple answer is to reverse it without delay.

We call on the European Union to more than take note but to ensure that our politcal dioloague going forward is infused with this isssue and to take an active part in seeking to resolve it so that those entitled to the right of citzienship in the Dominican Republic will be restored to their full rights.