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Southwick, Katherine --- "The Urdu-speakers of Bangladesh: An Unfinished Story of Enforcing Citizenship Rights" [2011] ELECD 174; in Blitz, K. Brad; Lynch, Maureen (eds), "Statelessness and Citizenship" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Statelessness and Citizenship

Editor(s): Blitz, K. Brad; Lynch, Maureen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800679

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: The Urdu-speakers of Bangladesh: An Unfinished Story of Enforcing Citizenship Rights

Author(s): Southwick, Katherine

Number of pages: 27

Extract:

7. The Urdu-speakers of Bangladesh:
an unfinished story of enforcing
citizenship rights
Katherine Southwick




Source: © Greg Constantine 2010.


Figure 7.1 Overcrowding plagues every camp. Living conditions are
cramped and pose safety and health problems as families,
some as large as 15, live in 8 x 10 feet living spaces. In a room
decorated with old newspapers glued to the walls, a family of
seven lives and works in Kurmi Tola Camp in Dhaka.

Members of the Urdu-speaking minority in Bangladesh have always had
a right to citizenship under national law, but the challenge has come
from enforcing that right and the benefits that attach to it. Bangladeshi
courts have recognized Urdu-speakers as citizens in successive cases

115
116 Statelessness and citizenship

over the years. However, since the country gained independence from
Pakistan in 1971, the state has failed to acknowledge them as citizens
on a broad political and administrative level. This protracted disconnect
between law and policy has made the group's status uncertain, effectively
stateless.
For nearly four decades, the unwillingness of either government,
Bangladeshi or Pakistani, to formally recognize this community as citi-
zens has rendered an estimated 160 000­500 000 people vulnerable to
extreme poverty and without equal access to education, health services
and livelihoods.
Time, however, as well as the accretion of case law, has confirmed
this group's citizenship. Since the most recent 2008 High Court deci-
sion ordering government agencies to register individuals to vote and to
issue national ...