Locked out: The 12 million people without a country, and their need to become a citizen

[This article is part of a cover story package on the plight of the stateless in the July 5 issue of The Christian Science Monitor weekly magazine.] The victims of shifting borders, politics, or the happenstance of birthplace, the world's 12 million stateless people and their need to become a citizen are rising on the international human rights agenda. Until she graduated from high school, Sonia Camilise never had reason to question her nationality. She was born here in the Dominican Republic and grew up speaking Spanish, dancing merengue, and watching the boys play baseball in the grassy lot outside her family's small house. "I am Dominican," she says. "Of course." But two years ago, when she went to get a certified copy of her birth certificate – a necessary part of the college application process here – she discovered that her government had a different perspective. The civil registry officers told her that she was not Dominican, but Haitian.