KARACHI: “We have laws. They are progressive. But the issues arise due to non-implementation of laws,” said Tahera Hasan, attorney and the study lead of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s (HRCP) survey about “Access to citizenship”.

She was sharing her research findings in a consultation meeting on “The challenges to itinerant workers in Sindh in accessing citizenship documents and relief during Covid-19 crisis” here on Thursday.

In her presentation, she said that there were many people in Pakistan, who were without a computerised national identity card (CNIC).

“It holds you from accessing your fundamental rights such as education, employment, health facilities, bank accounts, property, etc,” she said, adding that mostly migrants from other countries as well as those who had moved from one city to another to find work were effected here.

“But the Constitution allows any citizen to move from one city to another for employment. Then there is a category of the stateless who have no identity. They are not recognised here in Pakistan and not by any other country.”

Despite centralised system, people are still asked to go to their hometowns to apply for citizenship documents

About the study, she explained that they surveyed 21 areas in Karachi and six districts, which included all districts minus Malir. Also they did 25 direct interviews that have come on record and about a hundred more of people they met and spoke to about their challenges and issues.

Seventy-three per cent of these people were migrants from the interior of Sindh to Karachi, 14pc were from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 10pc were from Punjab and two per cent had come from Balochistan to Karachi.

There were also gypsies and other groups that were also analysed in the study.

The issues keeping these folks from getting a CNIC or B-Form included 22pc saying that their applications were just not accepted by the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra), seven per cent were told to get their CNICs made from their hometowns, 17pc have their applications pending with Nadra while another seven per cent were pending in investigation by Nadra.

The problem here is that the follow up process of such investigations is not very clear cut. They just wait. And then there are another seven per cent who say that their CNICs have been blocked for different reasons, it was explained. Also there are some people with intruders in their family trees. Another eight per cent have their data entered in Nadra system, which is incorrect. Sometimes there are also things such as both or either of the parents do not have their CNIC or if they do it might have been blocked. Some are also put into a suspect category.

“There is an issue of lack of awareness, lack of education, lack of understanding and lack of communication also, which comes in the way of these people getting their identity papers,” the lawyer said.

CNIC and vaccination

“Then recently, another issue that arose due to people not having a CNIC, is their not being able to get vaccinated for Covid-19. But things have improved here to some extent due to advocacy and awareness,” she said, adding that even now there is only the Expo Centre in Karachi that is vaccinating people without a CNIC.

“Now it is not possible for all such people from Karachi to head to the Expo Centre. Many also don’t even know about it,” she pointed out.

“Many of those people without CNICs belong to the marginalised community, and they have lost out on government income support programmes such as the Ehsaas programme or any other relief programme that requires one to have a CNIC in order to access it,” she reminded.

“Then if you talk about Covid testing,” she continued with the survey findings, “some 31pc did not have access, 39pc are not aware if there is any testing happening, and 30pc claim that they have access to getting tested. But it was established through discussions later that they only thought that they had access to testing,” she said.

“Here, if we look at things in terms of our legal framework, there is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Convention on the Rights of the Child, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which Pakistan is a signatory to, and which speaks about the right to nationality, which the state is committed to give to the people who live here,” she said.

‘Birthright citizenship’

“Here another interesting thing is birthright citizenship. It is a neglected section. But so many children born here are not considered citizens here due to non-implementation of law. The right of nationality of a child born here is linked to the parents’ documentation. In many cases that documentation is often missing. Mind you, these are not cases where you might have migrated from anywhere or are stateless. They include people who have been living here even before Partition, who don’t have documentation, bringing them in the loop of being stateless despite having generations born here but without their papers of identity,” she explained.

“The Nadra system is centralised. A citizen can apply from any place. But despite that, there still are many cases in which people are told to apply from their hometowns for CNICs,” she said.

Some of her recommendations included awareness and understanding of importance of documentation such as B-Form or the Child Registration Certificate (CRC) and CNIC, review of administrative procedures, training Nadra staff to ensure that they are sensitised to the different issues faced by applicants, having Nadra representatives at local district or tehsil levels and reducing the number of documents required for obtaining CRCs and CNICs.

Mehwish Niaz, HRCP project manager from Lahore, and HRCP Co-chair Asad Iqbal Butt also spoke.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2021