A nonperson is a

citizen Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...

or a member of a group who lacks, loses, or is forcibly denied social or legal status, especially basic

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

, or who effectively ceases to have a record of their existence within a society (''

damnatio memoriae is a modern Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory", indicating that a person is to be excluded from official accounts. Depending on the extent, it can be a case of historical negationism. There are and have been many routes to , includi ...

''), from a point of view of traceability, documentation, or existence. The term also refers to people whose death is unverifiable.

Legal status

In the case of undocumented immigrants and at times foreign nationals in the United States who have entered the country legally, there are comparisons made to non-personhood due to their lack of agency and differential treatment under the law.
Asserting that someone is a nonperson is implicitly a

normative Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A norm in ...

statement; by doing so, it is implied simultaneously that the person referred to is no longer entitled to the rights that any person ''should'' have. Who a person is and what every person is entitled to depends on context and social norms. For example, wards that are under the authority of a

legal guardian A legal guardian is a person who has been appointed by a court or otherwise has the legal authority (and the corresponding duty) to make decisions relevant to the personal and property interests of another person who is deemed incompetent, call ...

due to

infancy An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...

incapacity Legal capacity is a quality denoting either the legal aptitude of a person to have rights and liabilities (in this sense also called transaction capacity), or altogether the personhood itself in regard to an entity other than a natural person ( ...

, or

disability Disability is the experience of any condition that makes it more difficult for a person to do certain activities or have equitable access within a given society. Disabilities may be cognitive, developmental, intellectual, mental, physical, ...

are not usually considered nonpersons.

Examples

There are many possible meanings associated with the term ''nonperson''.

Prison camps

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

extermination camps Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

people and

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

were treated as nonpersons. The purpose of these camps was to systematically dehumanise these unwanted peoples, use them where possible, and dispose of them efficiently. "Nonperson" status was required because it removed the moral and social obstacles for committing otherwise objectionable acts of

violence Violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened ...

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in C ...

abuse Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of a thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other t ...

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...

and

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...

Unofficially missing people

Some people are covertly held by governments or other bodies, and effectively cease to exist. This happened under Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile and Argentina's last military dictatorship. It was also the guiding strategy behind the Nazi government's ''

Nacht und Nebel ''Nacht und Nebel'' (German: ), meaning Night and Fog, was a directive issued by Adolf Hitler on 7 December 1941 targeting political activists and resistance "helpers" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, who were to ...

(Night & Fog)'' policy in Western Europe. To dodge pointed questions regarding supposedly democratically controlled governments covertly holding people or employing

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts ...

plausible deniability Plausible deniability is the ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to denial, deny knowledge of or responsibility for any damnable actions committed by members of their organizational hierarchy. Th ...

of knowledge might be used. The existence of

ghost detainee Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous.CIA prison system CIA black sites refer to the black sites that are controlled by the CIA and used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain combatant, enemy combatants. US President George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated ...

is an example of this. In North Korea even prominent people are "airbrushed from history", because the government has complete control over the internal media. For example Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of Leader

Kim Jong-Un Kim Jong-un (; , ; born 8 January 1982) is a North Korean politician who has been Supreme Leader of North Korea since 2011 and the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) since 2012. He is a son of Kim Jong-il, who was North Korea's sec ...

, has been removed from pictures and videos since his execution. KCNA and ''Rodong Sinmun'' began erasing references to Jang "as completely as possible", deleting some 100,000 and 20,000 news items from their websites, respectively.

References

{{Conformity Human rights abuses Historical negationism Personhood

Legal status

Examples

Prison camps

Unofficially missing people

See also

References