Migrant children born at sea on unregistered vessels could be granted citizenship, provided Malta is their first port of call, if changes sought by the Children’s Commissioner are implemented.
“This would make it possible for migrant babies born on boats carrying irregular immigrants to Malta avoid becoming stateless, thereby enjoying their fundamental right to a nationality,” Helen D’Amato wrote in her office’s annual report for 2013.
In May, the Ombudsman said his office had reached an agreement with the Home Affairs Ministry for the Civil Code to be amended so that migrants born at sea would be given a legal identity in Malta, meaning their birth would be registered.
However, registration would not mean the children will be given citizenship. In this respect, the commissioner’s recommendation goes a step beyond.
These benefits and services should not be given out of a sense of charity
While it tackles the problem of children born at sea, it leaves others situations of stateless children unresolved, as in the case of Stera, nine, and her six-year-old brother Mohammed, whose story was told in The Sunday Times of Malta.
The children were born in Malta but do not enjoy citizenship.
They remain stateless because their father is a Syrian Kurd (one of many hundreds of thousands stripped of citizenship in the 1960s and 1970s).
Their Syrian mother could not register them because, under Syrian law, she cannot confer her citizenship to her spouse or her children born abroad.
Malta is not a signatory to two UN conventions – promulgated in 1954 and in 1961 – that aim to stop people being rendered stateless in the first place and give a legal framework guiding countries that host people without citizenship on how to protect them.
In the annual report, the Children’s Commissioner dedicates a chapter to migrant children where she talks about their right to seek asylum in Malta and stresses that detention centres are no place for children.
“Detention is intrinsically harmful to children, who are unable to cope with its psychological pressures,” the report states.
Earlier this month, nine NGOs called on the government to take concrete steps to ensure that no child ever again set foot in a detention centre.
In a statement released on occasion of World Refugee Day, they recalled that, on Freedom Day, the Prime Minister had pledged to end the detention of children.
The Children’s Commission noted in her report that migrant children ought to be given “full and equal rights” to other children living in Malta together with services tailored for their needs.
“These benefits and services should not be given out of a sense of charity and compassion but on the basis of the fundamental rights of migrant children,” the report says.