• There are four methods of becoming a citizen in Romania. Here is a quick overview of all of them.

1. Birth

So basically, if one or both of a person’s parents are Romanian citizens, he is. This applies if he is born abroad. If a child found in Romania’s parents are unknown, that child is considered a Romanian citizen.

2. Adoption

If a child is adopted by two Romanian citizens, then he is a citizen upon the date of adoption. If only one of his parents is a citizen, and the other is a foreign citizen or has no citizenship, the child’s citizenship must be mutually agreed on by the adopting parents. If they cannot agree, the court will decide on the child’s citizenship based on what is in his best interests. His consent is necessary for this decision to be valid if he is fourteen or over. However, if his adoption is stated invalid or annulled, and he resides abroad or chooses to reside abroad, he loses his citizenship.

3. Repatriation

If one loses one’s citizenship, one can reapply for repatriation. The same basic rules for a child being adopted by citizens apply to a child whose parents are applying for repatriation. If both parents are repatriated the child is considered a Romanian citizen. If only one is repatriated, the parents must agree on the child’s citizenship, or the courts will decide. Again the child’s consent is necessary if he is fourteen or older. If one spouse is repatriated, it does not affect the citizenship of the other.

3. Request

If one was born in Romania, but never had a citizenship or does not currently have one, he can apply for one if he currently resides in Romania. Even if he was not born in Romania, he can apply for a citizenship after residing in Romania for five years, or three if his spots or civil partner is a Romanian citizen. If he is applying for citizenship, he must:

• Be 18 or over
• Show a loyal attitude to Romania
• Have generally good behavior and not have committed any crimes making him unworthy of citizenship
• Have legal proof of existence (birth certificate)
• Have a general understanding of the Romanian language so that he can thrive in Romanian society

A child is granted citizenship the date that his parents are. If only one parent is a Romanian citizen, they must agree on the child’s citizenship or the court will decide for them. The child’s consent is necessary of he is fourteen or older.

“It’s appalling that a country as educationally advanced as India is still mired in the caste system where women and people of lower rank are treated as inferior, and male government officials still make excuses for rapists. This is a country that had a female prime minister before the whole western world did, and half their country is still ignored and things like this are still allowed to happen. Yes, that same dichotomy exists in our country; we have ghettos with desperately under-educated people living in poverty and crime, but I still don’t think our country takes any crimes as casually as this.” –Julie Howard

In 2012, a young Indian woman was beaten and gang-raped on a moving bus, and the injuries she sustained proved to be fatal when she died from her wounds. This caused a huge uproar among India’s citizens.

Before this incident, laws against rape were lightly enforced, and rape victims were often shamed by the authorities. After the 2012 bus rape, politicians promised that rape would be treated as a serious crime and that perpetrators would be punished accordingly. Many changes have taken place since then, including harsher laws against sexual assault and less media avoidance of the topic. However, last week, two teenage girls, cousins, were brutally gang raped and murdered, their bodies left swinging from a mango tree, and the reaction to this crime is considered largely disproportionate by many. Politicians have said little on the matter, media coverage died quickly after the rapes, and few protests of the rapes have taken place. Many think this seeming indifference can be attributed to the fact that the girls were “untouchables”, the lowest and most highly discriminated against group in India’s severe caste system. Ranjana Kumari, a prominent women’s activist in India, believes the rapes could have been a brutal form of political revenge, as the group the girls belonged to, the dalits, had very few supporters of the Yadavs, the ruling party that the men accused of the crime belong to. The crime has not gone completely ignored–suspects have been arrested, as well as negligent police officers–but the reaction the rapes received was quiet and showed little outrage.

In 2011, only 24,000 rapes were reported in India, and while that may seem like a lot, experts estimate that fewer than one in ten rapes are actually reported, due to how stigmatized rape in India really is. In the US, rape victims are seen as just that–victims. In India, they are shamed and ostracized.

I believe Rape is one of the worst things a person could ever do to another human being, possibly the worst. It goes beyond violation of the body. Sexual assault is the deepest invasion of someone’s rights, their freedom, their choice. Their CHOICE. Rape takes away someone’s choice on whether they want to give their body to someone, whether they want to be vulnerable, whether they want to trust the person they are with. Rape makes a person into a plaything for others to use for their own pleasure. It is the deepest and most horrific form of abuse there is. It is sex in its worst form, in a way sex was never meant to be: not an act of love, not an act of pleasure, but a way of putting someone down to the point where they don’t feel safe in their own skin.  Rape takes away someone’s control in the surest and most cruel way possible and leaves them powerless. Rape is violation. It is abuse. It is terror. It is hell put into a person, who burns and burns others with no remorse. It is shame. It is stigma. It is pain. It is rage. It is everything we as humans are supposed to despise.

Now imagine a society where Rape, capital R stigma shame abuse terror hell rage

goes unsaid, unpunished. Imagine a society where Rape can be inflicted on two young girls, girls my age, and not be cried about. Imagine a man who hears about this and says, “Boys will be boys.” Imagine your daughter, sister, mother living in such a society. Imagine that. Now tell me there is progress being made in such a country. Tell me there is change. Tell me there is fairness. You can’t. You can’t because there is not. You can’t because not everyone in India, not everyone in the world, will be saddened by the gang rape of two girls. There is no fairness. There is no justice. There is Rape, and there is acceptance of it. And that is the deepest violation this world will ever know.

Well, the moral of this game is…I’m a horrible politician. And politics suck. And believe me, there is WAY too much pressure on Politicians! We don’t give Obama nearly enough credit. I’m not kidding when I say this game was scarring, and near impossible for someone who knows almost nothing about politics in general and even less about the politics of the Middle East. Sure, I understand the basics: Palestinians and Israelis pretty much hate each other, the Israelis because they think they have a right to the land that was formerly Palestine, and the Palestinians because they think the Israelis are always judging them. Well, you see, in the game, the player has two scores: what the Palestinians think of you, and what the Israelis think  of you. The player has the option of playing as The Palestinian President or the Israeli Prime Minister. I played as the Israeli Prime Minister. Now, the only way to win the game is to get complete support from both nations…well, suffice it to say, I didn’t win. My tactic was try to make everyone happy at once, without paying attention to the annoying polls in the corner…don’t even really know what those are about. Anyway. My people were jerks. Yeah, that’s right. Whenever I did something to help the Palestinians, they said I was rewarding terror. When I did something that negatively affected the Palestinians, the Israelis were happy enough, but the Palestinians hated me. So I tried to patch up my relationship with them by offering aid, and they said my actions were suspicious because they were right after an intense negative action toward them. Hmm…they may be right. Still, though! Politicians are hugely underappreciated. If this is what things are really like in the Middle East, then boy, am I glad I don’t live there. By the end, I was close to tears and practically had a nervous breakdown. In a fit of rage, I bombed the Palestinian government AND police, offered above mentioned suspicious aid randomly, and basically screwed everybody over that I could int he worst ways possible until I was kicked out of office. So basically, you do NOT want me managing your nation. I think I’ll just stick to joining the peace corps or something, because if any big decisions are ever left up to me, I’ll just end up blowing up my people because they don’t understand my stress. Yeah. That would work.