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Dominican Republic: Of Baseball Players and Birth Certificates
August 13, 2009 | Melanie Teff | Tagged as: Dominican Republic, Statelessness
U.S. major league baseball teams recently started requiring potential players and their parents to undergo DNA testing to prove who recruits are – an attempt to try to ensure that they aren't understating their age in order to win more lucrative contracts. Fortunately there is a better, cheaper and more reliable way to confirm age and identity. It’s called birth registration.
The issue of DNA-testing would probably not have arisen if the Dominican Republic, the origin of many aspiring Major League Baseball stars, had a reliable and fair birth registration system in which people have confidence. But that system does not currently exist in the Dominican Republic. Back in 2005, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Dominican government to create a simple, accessible and non-discriminatory birth registration system. Yet at least one quarter of children in the Dominican Republic are still unregistered.
The discrimination in the birth registration system persists. Dominicans who have the lowest access to birth registration are children of Haitian descent. The Dominican Constitution states that all children born on its territory are Dominican, with the only exceptions being children of diplomats and “people in transit.” In an attempt to deny Dominican citizenship to people of Haitian origin, the Dominican Republic has taken to arguing that this population is “in transit” – despite their presence in the country for generations. There are even large numbers of people who were given birth certificates in the past who have now had them confiscated due to a more restrictive policy being applied retroactively.
Last year I wrote about a young man I met in the Dominican Republic who had lost a contract to play baseball in the U.S. as a result of his identity documents being placed “under investigation” by the Dominican civil registry office because his parents were Haitian. He was born in the Dominican Republic, was given a Dominican birth certificate, went to school and grew up in the Dominican Republic, and only spoke Spanish; yet it was alleged that he was “in transit” in his own country. Questions about age were eventually raised in his case too.
Dominicans are rightly proud of the remarkable world-class talent that so many of its citizens have displayed for playing baseball. But this positive image is currently tarnished by its dysfunctional and discriminatory birth registration system. Its reputation would be greatly enhanced if it were to comply with the order of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and to set up a well-managed birth registration system that treats people fairly. The Dominican Republic will never solve its problem of establishing the identity and age of its citizens until it does so.
The issue of DNA-testing would probably not have arisen if the Dominican Republic, the origin of many aspiring Major League Baseball stars, had a reliable and fair birth registration system in which people have confidence. But that system does not currently exist in the Dominican Republic. Back in 2005, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Dominican government to create a simple, accessible and non-discriminatory birth registration system. Yet at least one quarter of children in the Dominican Republic are still unregistered.
The discrimination in the birth registration system persists. Dominicans who have the lowest access to birth registration are children of Haitian descent. The Dominican Constitution states that all children born on its territory are Dominican, with the only exceptions being children of diplomats and “people in transit.” In an attempt to deny Dominican citizenship to people of Haitian origin, the Dominican Republic has taken to arguing that this population is “in transit” – despite their presence in the country for generations. There are even large numbers of people who were given birth certificates in the past who have now had them confiscated due to a more restrictive policy being applied retroactively.
Last year I wrote about a young man I met in the Dominican Republic who had lost a contract to play baseball in the U.S. as a result of his identity documents being placed “under investigation” by the Dominican civil registry office because his parents were Haitian. He was born in the Dominican Republic, was given a Dominican birth certificate, went to school and grew up in the Dominican Republic, and only spoke Spanish; yet it was alleged that he was “in transit” in his own country. Questions about age were eventually raised in his case too.
Dominicans are rightly proud of the remarkable world-class talent that so many of its citizens have displayed for playing baseball. But this positive image is currently tarnished by its dysfunctional and discriminatory birth registration system. Its reputation would be greatly enhanced if it were to comply with the order of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and to set up a well-managed birth registration system that treats people fairly. The Dominican Republic will never solve its problem of establishing the identity and age of its citizens until it does so.
