Birthright Crisis: The fight for citizenship in the Dominican Republic
Eight years ago, when this powerful film was made, the Dominican Republic was already in the midst of a "Birthright Crisis."
On September 23, 2013, this crisis was made official by the Dominican Republic's Constitutional Court's ruling that citizenship can only be granted to people born to one Dominican parent since 1929. Asked to rule in the case of one person, a 29-year old Cominican-born women named Julian Deguis Pierre, the Court decided to render Ms. Pierre, and retroactively, a quarter of a million of her compatriots, stateless. As one of the dissenting judges in the case has bravely declared, this ruling is unprecedented, unconstitutional, and unjust.
(To read Edwidge Danticat's appeal in its entirety, please click here.)
This film forcefully shows why we cannot remain silent:
Birthright Crisis 2013 from Haitian Women 4 Haitian Refugees on Vimeo.
People of Haitian descent are systematically denied citizenship rights in the Dominican Republic. This video is about the Haitian-Dominican community's resistance in the face of illegal deportations, scapegoating, and exclusion.
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