An analysis on the United States' approach to resolving statelessness
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Date
2021-05
Department
Towson University. Department of History
Program
Human Rights & History Minor
Citation of Original Publication
Painter, Taryn. "An Analysis on the United States' Approach to Resolving Statelessness." Thesis, Towson University, 2021.
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Abstract
[From Introduction:] Experts on statelessness emphasize that if the goals of the #IBelong are to be reached by 2024, drastic changes will have to be enacted by key international players. The United States, a global power in the United Nations and the United Nations Security Council, is one country that must change its perspective on statelessness to propel the work of #IBelong. The United States has taken an indifferent stance towards the campaign and has failed to commit to any of the ten Global Action Plans. The refusal to participate in the #IBelong campaign stems from the U.S. government’s continued ignorance and denial of statelessness as a domestic issue. Formal U.S. policies frame statelessness as a foreign policy issue to be addressed in countries abroad, despite the U.S. State Department’s admission that “statelessness exists in every region of the world” as a “largely ‘hidden’ problem without government recognition.” Though the U.S. urges other states abroad to resolve existing issues of statelessness, the U.S. government itself hesitates to adopt a strategy that recognizes, acknowledges, and assists its own stateless population.
The United States absolves itself as a perpetrator of human rights abuses by refusing to engage with critical UN initiatives on statelessness and by further ignoring its own lengthy history of creating and maintaining statelessness. The United States continues to uphold the problematic ideals of American exceptionalism, thereby exempting the government from accountability measures and cherry-picking which universal rights receive recognition under domestic law. Without immediate changes to its view of statelessness, the United States will fail to achieve its foreign policy objectives as a global defender of human rights and equality.