South Asia State of Minorities Report 2019 – Migrants, refugees and the stateless

As conflict, persecution or the pursuit of better opportunities has led to increased migration throughout South Asia, our understanding of minorities must also similarly evolve. The region’s religious, ethnic, linguistic and gender minorities remain marginalised from the mainstream of development and experience violence from both state and non-state actors. Refugees, migrants and the stateless make up a disproportionate number of the poor and excluded in these countries, and it is these very minorities who disproportionately tend to become refugees or stateless.

South Asia State of Minorities Report 2019: Migrants, Refugees and the Stateless seeks to identify the different groups that have been denied, among other things, access to fundamental rights and services, and, in some cases, even recognition of their status. The report demonstrates how this impacts their everyday experiences and enables abuse of their human rights. The report presents six country chapters—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka—reporting on the condition of the refugees, migrants and the stateless population within their territories while also providing recommendations to better protect their rights.

The South Asia State of Minorities Report is planned as a tool for advocacy. It is hoped that the periodic reports on outcomes for minorities and the quality of state provisioning for them, will spur public debate on the subject in the region and create the conditions for state parties and the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to agree to give serious consideration to issues of minorities, refugees, migrants and the stateless and how to deliver for them. The purpose of the project is about promoting citizenship, a central challenge of the ‘deepening democracy’ agenda in the region. This publication is the third in the series following the publication of South Asia State of Minorities Report 2018: Exploring the Roots and South Asia State of Minorities Report 2016: Mapping the Terrain.

The South Asia Collective is a group of human rights activists and organizations that dream of a just, caring and peaceful South Asia, that came together in December 2015 to document the condition of the region’s minorities—religious, linguistic, ethnic, caste and gender, among others—hoping this would help in better outcomes for South Asia’s many marginalised groups.