Comments to the Amendments to Estonian Law on Citizenship

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Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 14:25:07 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: Comments to the Amendments to Estonian Law on Citizenship

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Aleksei Semjonov <[email protected]>

Comments to the Amendments to Estonian Law on Citizenship



Comments to the Amendments to Estonian Law on Citizenship

Recently the Parliament of Estonia has adopted amendments to the Law
on Citizenship that provide the part of stateless children access to
Estonian citizenship (8 December 1998 - see, also, MINELRES, 21
December 1998; and Estonian Foreign Ministry's Press Release:
http://www.vm.ee/eng/index.html).

The decision was welcomed by many observers as a step in the right
direction, which are designed to promote inclusiveness in Estonia and
to
help to soft the consequences of mass disenfranchisement of minority
population resulted from Estonian citizenship legislation. Estonian
Foreign Minister stated that this step reflects the wish "to speed up
the integration of Estonian society". The newspaper <Postimees> has
claimed that the bill of amendments demonstrates a good will of
Estonian legislators.

One has to agree with the general positive evaluation of this
decision.
However, some additional comment would be useful.

First of all, it should be noticed that at the time of the adoption of
the bill, Estonia remained the only exception among European countries
that did not confer its citizenship on otherwise stateless children.
And even in this circumstances the process of adoption have met a
great difficulties and resistance: the decision was delayed and
postponed several times, and finally only just had got 51 votes needed
(55 parliamentarians voted for).

It hardly demonstrated "a good will of Estonian legislators", but
shows that the parliament have made this decision only under strong
international pressure.

Moreover, one could find among the parliamentarians who voted against
the bill, or avoided from voting, a number of members of the
Constitutional Committee of the Parliament (Tiit Kabin - chairman,
Valmar Adams, Mart Nutt), and Estonian members of the EU Parliamentary
Assembly - Kristina Ojuland (vice-president of the Assembly), Tunne
Kelam (member of Human Rights Committee), Tiit Made, Jurgen Ligi.
Thus, in fact, they refused to recognise that Estonia should fulfill
provisions of basic human rights instruments signed and ratified by
Estonian Republic. The question arises, whether these persons fully
understand the consequences and obligations stemming from Estonia's
participation in international treaties?

Secondly, according to insert changes only children less than 15 years
old, who were born within the Estonian territory after 26 February
1992 can obtain Estonian citizenship. Both parents of the child must
be stateless, and they are obliged to reside in Estonia no less than
five years.

With regard to the Convention of the Rights of the Child, one could
still argue that the new amendments do not go far enough. There are
still many children born on Estonian territory who, because they are
not lucky enough to be born after 26 February 1992, or because one of
their parents is not stateless, will not be entitled to citizenship.

Thirdly, the Citizenship and Migration Board nave reported that the
bill
will affect approximately 6 500 children. At the same time the number
of
stateless persons residing permanently in Estonian territory is
estimated as 250 000 (20% of the total population). Therefore, the
adopted bill will hardly have significant effect on the reduction of
mass statelessness in Estonia. Press Release of the Foreign Ministry
states that "with this step the Riigikogu (Parliament) completely
harmonised Estonian legislation concerning citizenship and minority
issues with international law". Such triumphant self-evaluation
evidently seems premature.

Aleksei Semjonov
Legal Information Centre for Human Rights

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