A party-list lawmaker on Wednesday called on the Department of Foreign Affairs to address the issue of so called “stateless Filipinos,” especially the illegitimate Filipino children in the Middle East and other Islamic countries who have no citizenship.
During the budget deliberations of the Foreign Affairs department at the House of Representatives, Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta party-list Rep. Jericho Jonas Nograles said “stateless Filipinos” are illegitimate children of Overseas Filipino Workers who were born abroad but are not recognized as citizens by their host country.
What is worse, Nograles said, neither are these children issued Philippine passports because a birth certificate, which is non-existent in Islamic countries, is required.
“There could be thousands of these stateless Filipino children, but there’s no single government agency that looks after them,” he said.
Nograles said the DFA should at least conduct a headcount of these children and help them secure travel documents if they need to go back to the Philippines.
In response, DFA Secretary Perfecto Yasay admitted that statelessness was a new problem to the department that needed a new policy to solve.
“This is a very complicated issue and has not been looked into,” Yasay admitted during the hearing.
“ For one, it is not possible to issue a birth certificate when the person is born abroad,” he said.
