A day in the life of…

Liesl Heila Muller
Attorney, Head of the Statelessness Project, Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme

What does Lawyers for Human Rights’ work on statelessness look like?

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) is an implementing partner to the UNHCR for statelessness. We focus on advocacy for the protection of stateless persons and solutions to statelessness in South Africa, including ratification of the 1954 and 1961 conventions. We aim to develop and strengthen law and policy through advocacy and litigation. Clients approach us for direct legal service in our legal clinics in three different cities in South Africa. Through direct legal advice, assistance and litigation we aim to increase the level of individual documentation. We also spend time building capacity to deal with statelessness in South Africa by training other NGO’s, social workers and attorneys. We like to raise awareness of the issue through interactions with the media and short films which provide an insight into our clients’ lives. We have released our first statelessness short film, The Belonging Part 1. We will be launching a Practitioner’s Guide to Statelessness and Nationality in February 2015.
Could you describe a particular project you are working on right now?

LHR is currently working on a court case in which we obtained a court order declaring a stateless child to be a citizen of South Africa, despite being born stateless in South Africa. LHR will soon argue the matter in a court of appeal. This will clarify the legal issues and hopefully set a precedent in law for all stateless persons born in South Africa. If we are successful, all stateless children born in SA will acquire South African citizenship. LHR is also planning an outreach to rural areas in the Eastern Cape where levels of documentation are low and where people live in border areas. We will do individual surveys with people of undetermined nationality to assess the risk and causes of statelessness in the area. We will also train social workers, Home Affairs officials and University law clinics to deal with statelessness.

How did you get involved in statelessness?

I have always been very enthusiastic about human rights and social justice. I have a particular interest in reconciliation in race, culture and gender. The issue of national identity and the inclusion or exclusion of certain persons from a society is an intriguing issue and one that I believe should be addressed in law and policy in a country. I grew up in post-Apartheid South Africa and have experienced the conflict between the rights reflected in the Constitution of South Africa and the reality of people whose rights are violated daily. I joined Lawyers for Human Rights as an attorney in 2013 in the Statelessness Project.

What do you most enjoy about your work and what are the biggest challenges you face?

I love the fact that I am challenged by my work every single day. I need to be creative to help people. I love the fact that people are interested in the field when I tell them about my clients. There is hope to mobilise public support. Nothing beats the satisfaction of making the kind of difference in someone’s life that can mean the difference between life and death, both physically and psychologically. The biggest challenge we face is the low level of awareness of the issue as well as the fact that South Africa has no legal mechanism for identification or protection of stateless persons. We also face a lot of resistance because of xenophobia. South Africans are increasingly xenophobic and stateless persons are assumed to be foreign and therefore treated with mistrust. Officials struggle to conceive of a person with no nationality.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get involved in working on statelessness?

I would advise them to keep an open mind and to be very diligent to weed out their underlying and dangerous prejudices towards people who are perceived to be different and outside of their national identity. I believe that we should be setting the standard for acceptance of stateless people for others to follow. It is the subtle prejudices that exclude persons from enjoying the most basic rights in the end. I would also advise them to keep a success chart and a wall of photos of clients who they have successfully assisted. Dealing with statelessness can be extremely frustrating, but being reminded of the beautiful stories can encourage one to keep going. I will never forget the complete happiness of my clients when they are officially recognised as human beings.

What would you like to accomplish through your work?

I really want the project to leave a legacy in South African law and practice, paving the way for future practitioners to assist stateless persons. I would like to see a statelessness determination procedure being established in South African law. More than anything I would like to remedy that part of South African history which speaks to the very heart of our identity as a nation, an identity that was so irrevocably harmed and altered in the many years of colonisation and Apartheid. I would like to see the people of South Africa belong officially in their country. Our constitution declares that South Africa belongs to all that live in it. I would like to see that realised.