Submission to the UN Human Rights Committee: Review of the Dominican Republic

The Open Society Justice Initiative and the Center for Justice and International Law tendered this submission to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in preparation for its periodic review of the Dominican Republic on March 12, 2012.

At this session, the Committee will take up the issue of “measures taken to combat racism, particularly against persons of Haitian origin.” This submission concludes that measures taken by the Dominican Republic since its last periodic review in 2001 have actually operated to increase, rather than combat, discrimination against Dominicans of Haitian descent.

In particular, amendments to the country’s nationality laws and policies since 2004 have had the effect of depriving thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent of their citizenship and permanently excluding them from the political, economic and social life of their home country.