Announcing the Release of Securing Citizenship
Following the excerpts of the reports published on the blog over the course of November, the Centre for Public Interest Law, JGLS, has published Securing Citizenship, which can be found here. The report identifies the critical legal issues surrounding precarious citizens and stateless persons in India. It recommends strengthening the existing legal framework in three interrelated chapters: Status, Detention, and Socio-Economic Rights. The report’s recommendations draw on international law, Indian law, and best practices across jurisdictions, situating their implementation in India’s complex and unique landscape.
This report is the outcome of a research partnership between the Centre for Public Interest Law (CPIL) at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat (JGLS) and the Faculty of Law, Université Catholique de Lille. The authors convey their gratitude to the advisors – Amal de Chickera, Ioannis Panoussis, Niraja Gopal Jayal and Ravi Hemadri – for their important insights on the initial drafts of the report and guidance in navigating the law concerning statelessness. The authors are equally thankful to the commentators – Andrea Marilyn Pragashini Immanuel, Angshuman Choudhury, Ashna Ashesh, Carly A. Krakow, Darshana Mitra, Jessica Field, Sagnik Das, Suraj Girijashanker and Thibault Weigelt – for reviewing the report and sharing their detailed analyses.
The authors owe their thanks to Mohsin Alam Bhat, as Research Director, for lending his support and legal expertise to conduct this study. As research supervisor, Aashish Yadav coordinated and supervised the drafting of the report, guided the team at every stage, and structured their findings. The authors are very grateful for his passionate engagement and contribution to this report.
The team is grateful to Prof. E. Tendayi Achiume, Dr. Bronwen Manby, Prof. Michelle Foster, Amal de Chickera and Prof. Joshua Castellino for their respective endorsements of this report. The report carries a generous foreword by Prof. B.S. Chimni.
The team holds enormous appreciation for AbhilashRadhaKrishnan for designing the report and making it an enjoyable read. They are extremely grateful to Raki Nikahetiya for graciously allowing the use of his photograph as the cover image of this report.
The student authors of this report are:
Anushri Uttarwar, Arunima Nair, Khush Aalam Singh, Veda Singh, Vrinda Aggarwal, and Yamini Mookherjee from Jindal Global Law School.
Amandine Desmont, Claire Jacquot, Flora Turrado, Hélène Jolly, and Theo Antunes from Université Catholique de Lille.
We welcome responses to the report from our readers as submissions to the blog. The report authors encourage readers to write to them with thoughts and comments.
To foster engagement with the report, we invite you to attend the Securing Citizenship Webinar, organised in collaboration with Centre for Public Interest Law, JGLS. Our panelists include Amal de Chickera (Co-Founder & Co-Director, Institute on Statelessness & Inclusion), Sujata Ramachandran (Research Associate, Balsille School of International Affairs, Waterloo) and Oliullah Laskar (Advocate, Gauhati HC). Our moderator will be Mohsin Alam Bhat (Executive Director, CPIL). Please register at https://bit.ly/3lPXPOl to receive the link and password for the webinar.