After 36 years, she is still stateless

Manama : After spending 36 years of her life as a foreigner in India, a Bahrain-born woman, who was forced to leave the Kingdom at an early age, has finally made it back to her birthplace here in a bid to claim her nationality. 

Her story received public attention when the High Administrative Court recently ordered to investigate the claims made by the woman (name withheld). 

Court files say that the woman was born in the Kingdom to a Bahraini father and an Indian mother in the early 1980s. She claims that her biological father abandoned her 36 years ago. 

In 1982, her mother was forced to leave the Kingdom with the newborn after getting divorced. However, one of the conditions mentioned in the divorce certificate was that the child should be brought back to Bahrain when she reaches the age of 10.  

But that didn’t happen as the father refused to issue any legal documents, as his intention apparently was abandoning her. 

The mother thus left the Kingdom with her baby girl using a one-time exit pass, as she didn’t have any identity proofs back then. 

The woman, as per the court documents, was living in India as a foreigner since then. 

She, however, recently gained her entry into the Kingdom as a worker and had handed over the exit pass issued earlier by the Nationality, Passports and Residence Affairs (NPRA) to the employees at Bahrain International Airport. 

The woman’s advocate is now demanding the NPRA and the Central Informatics Organisation to grant her a Bahraini passport and an identity card and to enrol her in the official systems as a Bahraini citizen.

The court has adjourned the case to October 28 to hear the response of the
authorities.