Estonia: Law on Identity Documents

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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 11:24:45 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: Estonia: Law on Identity Documents

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Sergei Lebedev <[email protected]>

Estonia: Law on Identity Documents


A brief comment to the Law on Identity Documents (1118 SE) of 15
February 1999.

Basic discriminatory provisions
 
On February 15, 1999 the Riigikogu adopted the Law on Identity
Documents. 45 deputies voted for its adoption. According to the law
the identity documents are:
- the passport of Estonian citizen
- diplomatic passport
- alien's passport
- temporary travel documents
- refugee's travel documents
- service book of a seaman
- certificate on navigation
- certificate on return
 
The law contains a number of discrimination provisions, in particular:
 
1. The law contains a rule that an alien's passport does not give to
its holder the right for protection from the foreign representations
of Estonia. According to this rule, a stateless person who has a
residence permit in Estonia, in general has no opportunity for
protection of his rights outside Estonia in diplomatic way.
 
2. Estonian lawmakers treat freely item 2 of Article 2 of the ILO
Convention nr. 108 (1958) on national identification cards of seamen.
In particular, they introduced a new document in the global practice -
certificate on navigation, which is issued to a seaman-alien
(seaman-citizen has the book of a seaman), though item 2 of Article 2
of the same Convention requires distribution to a seaman-noncitizen
the seaman identity card (or passport according to item 1 of article 2
of the Convention) which has equal status with the document given out
to a seaman-citizen. It is not evident from the text of the Law that
these documents have equal status. It enables dual interpretation and
does not apply the provisions of the ILO Convention nr. 108 to the
certificate on navigation.
 
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