To: Canadian Government

From: Human Rights for the Stateless

According to UNHCR at least 10 million people around the world are denied a nationality and became stateless. This people are banned from accessing their basic Human Rights.  Rohingya people are one of the stateless people in today’s world. Since 1970s this people encounter massive persecution in Myanmar. A UN report shows that since 2012, there are 168,000 Rohingya who have been forced to leave Myanmar. Additionally, International Organization for Migration report shows that more than 87,000 Rohingya Muslims have been involuntarily evacuated to Bangladesh. Aljazeera has reported that the refugees often encounter rape, torture, arson and murder by Myanmar security. The problem has exacerbated because the refugees are unwelcomed in the countries around Myanmar such as Bangladesh and Thailand.
Every person has the rights to get nationality. In spite of this entitlement, there are stateless people in the world. UN is committed to promoting, protecting and lobbing human rights issues and it declared two important conventions regarding stateless people in the year 1954 and 1961. The main purpose of the 1954 UN Convention was to ensure the stateless people enjoy a minimum set of human rights.  The 1961 convention aimed to prevent statelessness and reduce it over time.  Canada has ratified the 1961 convention on the reduction of statelessness that obliges the country to have legislation and policy grants for stateless people. Moreover, the section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom protects stateless persons. The above instruments put an obligation on Canadian government to take actions on the current Rohingya issue.
As one of the countries who is committed to human rights protection, promotion and fulfillment, the Canadian government can fight for the rights and freedom of Rohigya people through different ways. The first measure by Canadian government can be giving relief service for Rohingya’s in Myanmar and pushing the government of Myanmar to end up the persecution of this people. In collaboration with other developed state and international organizations the government of Canada should create a platform to accept some of the Rohingya’s as a refugee.  The long-term measure can be facilitating discussion and reconciliation program between the Rohingya’s and the Myanmar government to end up the 1948 Citizenship Act passed by Myanmar government which exclude Rohingya’s people from getting citizenship in Myanmar.

The author of the policy brief is Stockholm Environment Institute. The focus of the brief is household energy in developing countries. The purpose of the policy brief is to influence the government and community on choice of fuel consumption in developing country.

The Generic Content of the Policy brief include key findings, the impact of household energy choice on health, environmental impact and co- benefits potential, household energy choice and its links to policy and the millennium development Goals and recommendations. The institution use key finding, problem elaboration and recommendation approach to transmit the policy brief for the concerned stakeholders.

The key findings of the policy brief include; three billion people depend on traditional sold fuels, exposure to indoor smoke doubles the rise of pneumonia and acute lower respiratory infections in children and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in adult, the daily demand for cooking fuel is estimated to be more than 2 million tonnes of biomass, black carbon emissions from the burning of traditional biomass for household cooking is responsible for an estimated 8 per cent of global GHG emission and switching to cleaner fuels and more efficient stoves for cooking would lead to significant health and environmental benefits. Research outputs discover that household energy choice is a major public health issues for the world’s poorest, impacts environment because of its GHG emission and it’s have a great impact to achieve the goals of Millennium Development Goal(MDG). The policy brief identifies that the success of introducing new form of household energy consumption will greatly depend on the level of acceptance of the new technologies by the local community.

The policy brief also give three recommendations for ways to improve household energy consumption. This include more efficient cooking technologies which replace traditional biomass should be promoted, to measure the health and climate impact and co- benefit of household energy interventions more researches is needed,  policy makers and stove programme designers should analyses consumer choice to identify the markets for improved stoves.

The author of the policy brief is the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Water and Energy. The policy area is Energy Sector in Ethiopia. The policy brief has two basic purposes this are: • To commutate the draft Energy policy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia for Stakeholders and • To incorporate the ideas and views of the stakeholders in the final National energy policy. The policy has five major parts. The first part of the policy gives a general background on the energy sector and the status of energy sector in Ethiopia. In its second and third part the policy deal about key issues in the energy sector specifically it gives an idea about the broad energy sector issues and the sector specific issues such as electricity, hydrocarbons, bio energy and other renewable energy. The fourth part of the policy deliberate about sector specific supply and demand side energy and policy objective and instruments. In the supply side it broadly deals about electricity, hydrocarbons, bio energy, other renewable energy and atomic energy. In the supply side the policy focusses on the household sector, transport sector, industrial sector, service sector and agricultural sectors. The final part of the policy is devoted for cross cutting issues. In this part the policy focuses on energy regulatory framework, energy sector governance, building strong energy institution and capacity, integrated energy planning, energy efficiency and conservation, energy pricing, research and development, environmental and social impact, gender, regional and international cooperation. The relationship between energy and economic sectors is intrinsic. As one of the fastest growing developing countries energy demand is increasing through times in Ethiopia. The main reason beyond the need for revision of energy policy are the structural and transformational changes in the country and in global context, to incorporate the new energy development related issues and directions which are not exist in the previous policy, the necessity and opportunity to switch to a new energy sustainable development model and to localize the emerging global energy trends in the national energy policy. The brief recommends the importance of considering atomic energy for power generation beyond agricultural and health sectors, gaining economic opportunity from regional energy interconnection and integration as it is gifted with large hydropower and other renewable energy, changing the traditional development path of energy and fuel wood consumption and more over it indicate the multi sectorial impact of energy sector and the integration of this sector in every sector of the country for sustainable development and growth.

Energy policy brief reflecting on the challenges of attaining a green economy for Botswana is written by United Nation Development Program (UNDP). The focus of policy brief is the Energy Sector in Botswana. The purposes of this policy brief is raising awareness on the status, challenges and opportunities of the energy sector in Botswana. The basic content of the policy brief include introduction, status of Energy services, the challenges facing the energy sector and opportunities of this sector. As one of the countries, that experience electricity shortage in Africa different policy briefs are exist concerning energy in Botswana and One of the policy briefs is written by UNDP.

To influence the policy makers the policy brief use the challenge, opportunity and recommendation tool. According to the policy brief  the challenges faced by the energy sector in Botswana include demand outstrips its supply, the high level of consumption of  petroleum products, lack of gender disaggregated data on the use of different source of energy, the significant role of wood as an energy source in rural areas of the country (increase drop out of children from school and put a great challenge on women participation in village governance), premature deaths because of the smoke of the wood, the use of diesel for agriculture and underground water extraction  increases GHG emission level, to generate power and  lack of  integration between different sector.

The opportunities for the energy sector in the country include abundance of sunlight, coal and cow- dung forms. The policy brief does not indicate the recommendation directly but indicate the opportunities for energy sector in the country. This includes 3,200 hours/annum with strength of 22 Mega Joules per hour, which is the highest solar strength in the world, the highest number of cattle population and the high volume of cow- dung. Even if the policy brief have shortcoming in terms of giving recommendations for policy makers it can be a milestone for policy makers if they combine the opportunities and the challenges mentioned in the policy brief to make implementable and effective policy in the country.

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