Dominican Republic

In the Dominican Republic, birth registration has become a site at which people are subject to retroactive denationalization. There have been cases in which Haitian descended Dominican citizens attempted to register their children, which triggered an investigation into the validity of their ancestor’s civil registration and denationalized the parents, leaving them (and their children) stateless. The DR’s 2004 General Migration Act has been used as justification to retroactively denationalize Dominican citizens of Haitian descent due to “in transit” exceptions. In addition, in 2013, the Constitutional Tribunal issued a court sentence, known as ‘la Sentencia’, retroactively stripping citizenship from 200,000 descendants of foreigners (mostly Haitians) going back to 1929. Nearly all human rights treaty bodies have expressed concern about and/or issued recommendations to end the practice of retroactive stripping of nationality (CERD, 2013; CESCR, 2016; CRC, 2015, 2023; CRPD, 2015; CEDAW, 2013; Human Rights Council, 2010, 2019, 2024, Human Rights Committee, 2012).