A pastor for the Church of the Brethren in the Dominican Republic has witnessed the confusion and devastation spurred by the statelessness crisis that the Office of Public Witness wrote about in the previous blog. Battling a high court ruling can seem nearly impossible, but mitigating its impact by helping those affected is how he has been approaching the situation.
Brothers and sisters in this denomination, especially members living in bateyes and including young people and children, have been deprived of state documents, leading to an uncertain future. Brethren have helped one another travel to obtain, fill out, and return paperwork to regain citizenship, a process that many do not have the finances, orientation, or even motivation to complete. The pastor says that speaking out against this situation is risky, not only for the stateless individuals, but even for himself as a pastor. Some government officials, judges and nationalists are suspicious and sometimes spiteful toward those who oppose the court ruling due to their bias against those born of Haitian decent.
For the coming year, research will be carried out to determine how many church members in the affected groups got their legal documents through the regularization plan and how to help the children of those who refused or somehow did not get them documents. Another project will also be under way to visit each church and determine the exact number of cases of statelessness and document the details of each.
At the Greensboro Annual Conference 2016, an insight session will be led by Dominican Brethren and is called “Iglesia de los Hermanos—Looking Forward and Looking Onward”. These leaders will share updates and discuss the vision of the church in the Dominican Republic, in light of this issue and others.
Read the stories of this population at http://stories.minorityrights.org/dominican-republic/.
Watch the trailer for the upcoming documentary “Our lives in transit” / “Vidas en tránsito” here!
With hope,
Christy Crouse
Peacebuilding and Policy Intern
Office of Public Witness
Washington, DC