A moving story of the fate of an ordinary man who, for lack of a nationality, was forced to lead an extraordinary life.
In this politically urgent book the author gives a face to Kamal, a stateless man who struggles to cope without a birth certificate.
Stateless is about a man who was forced to live life without an identity
Stateless – One Man’s Struggle for an Identity by Gerard van Leeuwen is about the implications of having no passport, no nationality and no rights, and belonging nowhere.
Some 10 million people around the world are stateless. With no birth certificate, Kamal Kojadin was in that very position, having fled Croatia with his parents in May 1945. The family managed to build a new life, but time and again they were forced to flee. After the death of his parents Kamal returned to Yugoslavia, and it was only then that he really started to feel the effects of living without official papers, as he found he was unable to open a bank account, buy a house, and marry. After the love of his life died, their children were taken away from him. Kamal felt like a prisoner in his home country, and ended up begging on the streets of Sarajevo.
Blogpost by Author Gerard van Leeuwen on the website of European Network on Statelessness.
UK Launch of Stateless by Gerard van Leeuwen
On Thursday 12 April 2018 in London we had the UK booklaunch of Stateless at the offices of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. They were so kind to host the event ‘Overcoming Statelessness’.
Excellent speakers consisted of Amal de Chickera, co-director and co-founder of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion; Chris Nash, the Director and co-founder of the European Network on Statelessness; Jo Bezzano, University of Liverpool Law Clinic; Cynthia Orchard, Statelessness Policy and Casework Coordinator at Asylum Aid, part of Migrants Resource Centre (MRC), and MRC’s representative on the Advisory Committee of the European Network on Statelessness; Sayed Ahmed AlWadaei, the Director of Advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD); and Lucy Gregg, who works in UNHCR’s legal protection team in the London office as a Senior Protection Associate.
It is during these events that one realizes the importance of books as means to raise awaress for social issues. Gerard van Leeuwen’s book is actually one of the few that is a work of narrative fiction on the subject which makes it such an excellent tool for this purpose, but at the same time it is a great read!
Great review by bookblogger Darya Danesh.
Blogpost by Author Gerard van Leeuwen on the website of European Network on Statelessness.
