Topic: Rights of Stateless Persons
Country: Ukraine
Delegate Name: Maddie Meyer
School: East Grand Rapids High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Ukraine position papers GLIMUN 2016 committees
Ukraine believes the issue of the lack of rights of stateless persons is a prevalent topic that must be taken seriously. Ukraine has many stateless people due to the disbanding of the Soviet Union and more recently, land disputes with Russia. In these cases, stateless people may have originally been citizens of Ukraine, living in Crimea for example, who no longer have the correct citizenship due to the changing borders. Ukraine believes that those people should be given the full rights of citizens because in many cases, it is not their fault they lost their correct citizenship.
Due to the large number of stateless people residing in Ukraine, the country has developed many detailed laws to protect the rights of those stateless persons. Ukrainian law states that regardless of the legality of their residence in Ukraine, all stateless citizens hold the same rights and freedoms, as well as restrictions, as Ukrainian citizens. Ukraine believes that all countries should be as accepting and accommodating to stateless people as their laws attempt to demonstrate. Furthermore, countries’ varying paths to citizenship need to be improved and simplified so as to be made easier for the average person to access.
Ukraine’s Stance on the Elimination of Xenophobia and Racism
Ukraine believes that xenophobia and especially racism are important problems in the country, however Ukraine also recognizes that those issues are of lower importance to the country due to many more pressing problems.
Ukraine has only small ethnically diverse groups with almost 78% of the population being of Ukrainian descent and the remaining percentage mostly held by the ethnicities of the surrounding countries. Due to this, the minuscule percentage of people of radically different races or ethnicities unfortunately face discrimination. Ukraine aligns with many western nations on this issue with the goal of discouraging and minimizing xenophobia and racism. Although it is difficult to stop these issues altogether, Ukraine hopes that possible new regulations or even cultural education programs to increase awareness of the seriousness of these issues will help lower the levels of xenophobia and racism.
