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U.S. ambassador calls on Dominican Republic to respect Haitian migrants rights

The Dominican Republic should grant birth certificates and citizenship to children born to Haitian migrant workers in the Caribbean country, the U.S. ambassador said Wednesday.

Ambassador Hans Hertell's comments come three days before the case of two girls of Haitian descent who were born in the Dominican Republic but denied Dominican citizenship returns to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

In an annual Thanksgiving week address, Hertell told a group of Americans and Dominicans gathered at a hotel in the capital that migrant rights and border security should be priorities for the next five years.

"I hope ... there will be a specialized body to monitor the border, and that security forces are trained to ensure that foreigners who reside in this country have the guarantees defined in the (U.N.) Universal Declaration of Human Rights," Hertell said in Spanish.

Some 500,000 to 1 million people of Haitian descent live in the Dominican Republic, many illegally. Though the Dominican constitution guarantees citizenship to anyone born on its soil, workers' children are routinely denied papers needed to attend schools and take higher-wage jobs.

The Costa Rica-based court on Saturday was to reconsider its 2005 ruling that Dominican authorities violated the girls' rights by denying them citizenship. The Dominican government has questioned evidence that the girls were born on Dominican soil.

The court does not have authority to alter laws or enforce its decisions but relies on international pressure and countries' commitments to ensure they are carried out.

Attention returned to the case last week when one of the girls' primary advocates, activist Sonia Pierre, received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in a ceremony in Washington, D.C.

It has also irritated some in the Dominican Republic. Commentator Miguel Guerrero, writing in Wednesday's El Caribe newspaper, complained that the Dominican Republic was a scapegoat for neighboring Haiti's problems.

"The majority of (Pierre's) denunciations are without substance, but that is of little importance to the great developed nations eager to let go of their responsibility to the poorest nation on the continent," he said.

The Dominican military plans to build a security force along the 391-kilometer (243-mile) border with Haiti. A 1,000-member army and navy force could be in place by January, said Vice Admiral Hector Lizardo Jorge, spokesman for the Dominican armed forces.